Kamel Center Lectures Set for Spring 2016
The Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at Yale Law School will host a series of lectures featuring academics from around the country during the Spring 2016 semester.
On January 26, 2016, Assistant Professor Ahmed El Shamsy, University of Chicago, will deliver a lecture titled “Classical Islamic Law and the Modern Quest for Authority.” Professor El Shamsy studies the intellectual history of Islam, focusing on Islamic law and theology, cultures of morality and literacy, and classical Islamic education. He is particularly interested in the changing ways that religious authority has been constructed and interpreted in the Muslim tradition.
On February 23, 2016, Professors Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School and Shahzad Bashir of Stanford University will discuss the book What is Islam? written by Shahab Ahmed. Ahmed, who passed away in 2015, was a postdoctoral associate in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. Professor Feldman specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. Professor Bashir specializes in Islamic Studies with a particular interest in the intellectual and social histories of Persianate societies of Iran and Central and South Asia circa fourteenth century to the present.
The final lecture of the term will take place on April 5, 2016 when Professor Michael Cook of Princeton University delivers a lecture titled “Was the rise of Islam a Black Swan Event?” Professor Cook, a Professor of Near Eastern Studies, is a highly regarded Islamicist who has made major contributions to the intellectual history of the medieval Islamic world. His works on Muhammad and early Islamic theology have become classics.
The Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at Yale Law School brings prominent scholars of Islam to the Yale campus for public lectures, seminar discussions, visiting fellowships, and visiting professorships. Sterling Professors Owen Fiss and Anthony T. Kronman co-direct the center. For more information, visit the Kamel Center’s website.
