ISLAMiCommentary Contributors

Here is a list of regular contributors to ISLAMiCommentary. There are also many occasional contributors featured on our iComment pages. If you would like to contribute an article please write to the editor and see guidelines on our About page. 

I-wei Jennifer Chang is a D.C.-based writer and researcher on China, with an MA in international relations from the University of Maryland. Her research interests include Sino-Gulf relations, U.S.-China relations, Chinese foreign and security policies, China’s oil security, ethnic conflict, and U.S. foreign policy. She has conducted fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai, interviewing numerous Chinese scholars, think-tank researchers, and former ambassadors.

Read her articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

miriam cooke is Braxton Craven Distinguished Professor of Arab Cultures at Duke University.  She is author of several books, most recently “Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf” (University of California Press, January 21, 2014). Other books include “Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official” (Duke, 2007) and “Nazira Zeineddine: Biography of an Islamic Feminist Pioneer” (Oneworld, 2010).

Read her articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

 

 

Erdağ Göknar is Assistant Professor of Turkish & Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and core faculty member of the Duke Islamic Studies Center. Göknar teaches the popular “Geopolitics & Culture from Bosnia to Afghanistan” course in the fall and co-leads the Duke in Turkey undergraduate summer program.  Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy: The Politics of the Turkish  Novel (Routledge, 2013) is his latest book. 

Read his articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

 

Shalom Goldman is Professor of Religion at Middelbury College. His new book is “Jewish-Christian Difference and Modern Jewish Identity: Seven Twentieth Century Converts” (Lexington Books, 2015)

Read his articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

 

 

Bruce W. Jentleson is Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, and affiliated faculty with the Duke Islamic Studies Center. He is also a Distinguished Scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Jan.-June 2014), and Co-Principal Investigator with the Duke-American University-UC Berkeley “Bridging the Gap” initiative. Jentleson’s areas of expertise include Middle East peace and security, international conflict prevention, global governance, international security, and U.S. foreign policy. In 2009-11 he served as a Senior Advisor at the State Department. His publications include “American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century” (W.W. Norton, 5th edition 2013). Current projects include U.S. policy in the new Middle East, genocide and mass atrocities prevention, and a study of leading statesmen/women of the last century. In Fall 2013 he taught the Coursera MOOC (Massive Open Online Course): “21^st Century American Foreign Policy.”

Read his articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

Charles Kurzman is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. He is author of The Missing Martyrs (2011),Democracy Denied, 1905-1915 (2008), and The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (2004), and editor of the anthologies Liberal Islam (1998) and Modernist Islam, 1840-1940 (2002). His personal web site is kurzman.unc.edu and you can follow him on Twitter @CharlesKurzman.

Read his articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

 

Bruce Lawrence earned his PhD. from Yale University (1972) in the History of Religions: Islam and Hinduism. He served as the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of the Humanities at Duke University and is currently Professor Emeritus of Religion at Duke University. His research ranges from institutional Islam to Indo-Persian Sufism and also encompasses the comparative study of religious movements. He was founding director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center and currently serves on the DISC Advisory Board. He was a Carnegie Scholar of Islam from 2008-2010. His recent books have included On Violence – A Reader (with Aisha Karim); Messages to the World, The Statements of Osama Bin Laden; The Quran, A Biography; and, with his spouse, miriam cooke, Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop. His forthcoming book will be “Who is Allah?” (UNC Press, 2015).

Read his articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

A. David Lewis, Ph.D. is the co-editor of Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels, co-author of Some New Kind of Slaughter from Archaia Entertainment, and a founding member of Sacred & Sequential, a collective of religious studies and comics studies scholars. He currently teaches at colleges throughout the Greater Boston area, including Northeastern University, Bentley University, and MCPHS University, and has previously lectured at Boston University, Tufts University, Merrimack College, and Georgetown University. He is a steering committee member for the American Academy of Religion’s “Death, Dying, and Beyond” Group as well as co-editor of the forthcoming Digital Death: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age. His new regular column for ISLAMiCommentary Comics & Dialogue: Islam in Graphic Novels debuted February 3, 2014. You can follow him on Twitter @ADLewis. Read his columns on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

 

Haiyun Ma teaches in the history department at Frostburg State University in Maryland and has previously taught at George Mason University. His teaching and research interests are Chinese History, Islam and Muslims of China (including Xinjiang), China-Middle East relations, and China-Central Asian Relations. He is also an expert on China-Middle East relations at the Middle East Institute.

Read his articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

 

 

Negar Mottahedeh is Associate Professor in the Program in Literature and in the Women’s Studies Program, a cultural critic, and film theorist specializing in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies and Film Studies. She is known for her work on Iranian Cinema, but has also published on the history of reform and revolution, on Bábism, Qajar history, performance traditions in Iran, the history of technology, visual theory, and the role of social media in the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests. Her current research and writing on the uses of social media in uprisings for civil liberties and equality around the world supplement her engagement as blogger and activist. She is the author of Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema (Duke University Press, 2008) and Representing the Unpresentable: Historical Images of National Reform from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic of Iran (Syracuse University Press, 2007) — and has a forthcoming book  on the transformation of the ecology of online life in response to the uses of social media platforms during the course of the Iranian post-election crisis of 2009. Her essay  Karbala Drag Kings and Queens: A history of female ta’ziyehs was published  in Eternal Performance: Taziyeh and Other Shiite Rituals in 2010. Her edited volume `Abdu’l-Bahá’s Journey West: The Course of Human Solidarity was published in April 2013 . She tweets @negaratduke, is affiliated faculty with the Duke Islamic Studies Center.Read her articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

Abdeslam Maghraoui is an Associate Professor of the Practice in the Political Science department at Duke and a core faculty member at the Duke Islamic Studies Center. His general area of research is the connection between politics and culture in the MENA region, and his research has focused on political identity, political institutions, and political behavior. Maghraoui has carried out fieldwork in the region and has testified before various US government agencies on policy issues.

Read his articles on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

 

 

Joseph Richard Preville is Assistant Professor of English at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Tikkun, The Jerusalem Post, Muscat Daily, Saudi Gazette, and Turkey Agenda. You can follow him on Twitter @JosephPreville.

Read his Book Q & As (“By the Book”)  on ISLAMiCommentary.

 

 

 

 

David Schanzer is an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, and core faculty with the Duke Islamic Studies Center. He teaches courses on counterterrorism strategy, counterterrorism law and homeland security. Prior to his academic appointments, he was the Democratic staff director for the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005. His positions in the executive branch include special counsel, Office of General Counsel, Department of Defense (1998-2001) and trial attorney, U.S. Department of Justice (1992-1994). You can follow him on Twitter @SchanzerDavid.

Link to his articles on ISLAMiCommentary.