Associate Professor, Religion, Spirituality, and Society
Samuel Kigar is associate professor of Islam in the Department of Religion, Spirituality, and Society.
His research interests include the history of Muslim political, legal, theological, and mystical thought. He is specifically focused on Muslim conceptions of territoriality and spatial belonging, the history of Islam in the Maghreb, and religion and politics.
He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled, Islamic Terroir: Religion, Community, and Land in Modern Morocco, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Two recent articles address the themes of this book-in-progress: "God’s Feminine Shadow: Fatema Mernissi’s Muslim Political Theology of Territory," in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and “Itineracy, Homecoming, and Territory in the Maghrib Over the Longue Durée," in the edited volume, A World of Realms: A Long View of Diplomacy and Spatiality in the Premodern Islamic World.
Kigar also works on interreligious relationships and religion and literature. Within these areas, he has published on the intersections in the thinking of Muhammad Asad and Erich Auerbach and is working on a second book project entitled, The Muslim Antigones. He is also part of a multi-year working group on Olga Tokarczuk’s novel, The Books of Jacob, based at Columbia University and Indiana University.
His teaching includes introductory and advanced courses on topics related to Islam, antisemitism and Islamophobia, Judaism, and various courses on the intersection of religion, politics, and the environment.
OFFICE HOURS
M and W 3:30-4:40 p.m. or by appointment.