Bios of Workshop Speakers

Professor Bruce B. Lawrence

Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies

Duke University

USA

 

Professor Lawrence’s research interests include: Contemporary Islam as Religious Ideology; Islamic Cosmopolitanism; the Multiple Roles and Uses of the Qur’an. Among his recent books are: The Koran in English - A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2017), Who is Allah? (UNC/EUP Press, 2015), The Qur’an – a Biography (Grove/Atlantic, 2006);  and Sufi Martyrs to Love (with Carl Ernst; Palgrave, 2002). He is also working with Professor Rafey Habib on a multi-year project, The Qu’ran – A Verse Translation, forthcoming from WW Norton in 2020.

His early publications explored the terrain of Muslim speculative thought (kalam) and also comparative religions, especially Islam and the Indic traditions. After the Iranian revolution, he engaged the notion of Islamic fundamentalism in a prize-winning book, Defenders of God (1989), and also undertook the translation into English of a Persian classic, Morals for the Heart (1992).

Professor Lawrence has won numerous scholarships, garnered academic awards (including one from the leading Turkish NGO on women: TURKADD in February 2012), and generated intense debates through his publications.

 

Professor Miriam Cooke

Braxton Craven Professor Emerita of Arab Cultures

Duke University

USA

 

Professor Cooke has been a visiting professor in Tunisia, Romania, Indonesia, Qatar and Istanbul. She serves on several national and international advisory boards, including academic journals and institutions. Her writings have focused on the intersection of gender and war in modern Arabic literature, Arab women writers’ constructions of Islamic feminism, contemporary Syrian and Khaliji cultures, and global Muslim networks.

In addition to co-editing five volumes, she is the author of several monographs that include The Anatomy of an Egyptian Intellectual: Yahya Haqqi (1984); War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War (1987), Women and the War Story (1997); Women Claim Islam (2001); Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official (2007), Nazira Zeineddine: A Pioneer of Islamic Feminism (2010), Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf (2014) and Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience and the Syrian Revolution (2017). She has also published a novel, Hayati, My Life (2000). Several books and articles have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Dutch and German.

 

Professor M.A.R. Habib

Professor of English, Rutgers University/GUST

 

 

 

Professor Habib is a scholar in the areas of literary criticism, theory and philosophy. His publications include three histories of literary criticism, a study of T.S. Eliot’s philosophical background, and two translations of Urdu poetry. He has recently completed two books: Hegel and the Foundations of Literary Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Hegel and Empire: From Postcolonialism to Globalism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017). His books are used in numerous institutions around the world.

His interests also extend to Islamic literature, as well as Post-Colonial studies and World literature. He has been contracted by Liveright Publishing Corporation (an imprint of W.W. Norton) to translate the Qur’an into English verse, in collaboration with the distinguished Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence.