Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Humanities in the World

The initiative explores the global dimension of humanities scholarship as well as the role of the humanities in society, supporting important new work that expands the scope of the traditional humanities.

Upcoming Events

  • The Covering Islam series presents a lecture by scholar Humeira Iqtidar.

    Lunch available from 12:15 pm for registered participants.

    Free and open to the public. Register to join in person. For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact humanities-institute@brown.edu or (401) 863-6070.


    About the Speaker

    Humeira Iqtidar is professor of politics at King’s College London. She is also a co-convenor of the London Comparative Political Theory Workshop and Race and Racism in the Global South seminar series and editor of McGill-Queen’s Studies in Modern Islamic Thought. Her research brings together postcolonial theory, comparative political theory, and Islamic thought with a focus on modern South Asia and has been concerned with questions of justice and tolerance, the place of religion in contemporary political imagination, the politics of knowledge, and the legacies of colonialism. Her research has been featured in interviews and articles in Al-Jazeera, the BBC World Service, Voice of America, Der Spiegel, the Social Science Research Council Online, Dawn, The Guardian, Express Tribune, The Conversation, and openDemocracy. Before joining King’s College London, she was based at the University of Cambridge as a fellow of King’s College and graduate research officer at the Centre of South Asian Studies. She has studied at the University of Cambridge, McGill University, and Quaid-e-Azam University.


    About the Series

    The Covering Islam series is organized under the aegis of the Humanities in the World Initiative at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities and cosponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies. It takes its cue from Edward Said’s 1981 book, Covering Islam , which explores distorting representations of Islam — as an object of judgment — by the Western media. Talks in the series will focus on the Islamic humanities, thinking with and through Islam rather than only thinking about it. The series is co-curated by Tiraana Bains, Leela Gandhi, Mohamed Amer Meziane, and Suvaid Yaseen.

    Register to attend this event
  • The Covering Islam series presents a lecture by scholar Omnia El Shakry.

    This event may take place in hybrid format with lunch served to registered in-person participants or be entirely remote. Information will be communicated to registered participants ahead of time.

    Free and open to the public. Register to join in person or on Zoom. For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact humanities-institute@brown.edu or (401) 863-6070.


    About the Speaker

    Omnia El Shakry is professor of history at Yale University. She specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of the modern Middle East, with a particular emphasis on the history of the human and religious sciences in modern Egypt. She is the author of The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2017) and The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2007). She is also the editor of Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) and Gender and Sexuality in Islam (Routledge, 2016). Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Stanford Humanities Center. She earned her BA in psychology from the American University in Cairo, an MA in Near Eastern studies from New York University, and her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. Prior to coming to Yale, she taught for 20 years in the Department of History at the University of California, Davis.


    About the Series

    The Covering Islam series is organized under the aegis of the Humanities in the World Initiative at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities and cosponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies. It takes its cue from Edward Said’s 1981 book, Covering Islam , which explores distorting representations of Islam — as an object of judgment — by the Western media. Talks in the series will focus on the Islamic humanities, thinking with and through Islam rather than only thinking about it. The series is co-curated by Tiraana Bains, Leela Gandhi, Mohamed Amer Meziane, and Suvaid Yaseen.

    Register to join this event in person or over Zoom
  • The Covering Islam series presents a lecture by scholar Amira Mittermaier.

    Lunch available from 12:15 pm for registered participants.

    Free and open to the public. Register to join in person. For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact  humanities-institute@brown.edu or (401) 863-6070.


    About the Speaker

    Amira Mittermaier is associate professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Bringing together textual analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, her research to date has focused on modern Islam in Egypt. Her first book, Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (University of California Press, 2010), explores Muslim practices of dream interpretation as they are inflected by Islamic reformism, Western psychology, and mass mediation. Her current book project, tentatively titled “The Ethics of Giving: Islamic Charity in Contemporary Egypt,” examines different Islamic modes of giving in post-revolutionary Egypt. She earned her Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from Columbia University.


    About the Series

    The Covering Islam series is organized under the aegis of the Humanities in the World Initiative at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities and cosponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies. It takes its cue from Edward Said’s 1981 book, Covering Islam , which explores distorting representations of Islam — as an object of judgment — by the Western media. Talks in the series will focus on the Islamic humanities, thinking with and through Islam rather than only thinking about it. The series is co-curated by Tiraana Bains, Leela Gandhi, Mohamed Amer Meziane, and Suvaid Yaseen.

    Register to attend this event

Past Events

The lecture series Art History from the South, presented with the Centre for Contemporary South Asia, amplified the collaborative humanities seminar and international symposium developped by Brown University faculty Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar and guest faculty Tapati Guha-Thakurta.
The initiative presented webinars with Deborah Thomas and Denise Ferreira da Silva as part of its new lecture series. "Race in a Global Frame" showcases transnational perspectives on racialization, racial injustice, racial emancipation, antiracist intervention, and critical race thinking.
The initiative presented three webinars. Classicist Emily Greenwood explored the postcolonial literature of author Dionne Brand. Philosopher Rae Langton reflected on freedom of speech as an enablement of certain powers. And political theorist Banu Bargu considered the use of the human body in political protest.
The initiative presented three webinars. Cultural anthropologist Omar Kasmani explores queer theory in the space of Islamic saints in Pakistan. Novelist Geetanjali Shree reflects on the subject of belief in fiction. And historian Manan Ahmed considers how devotional communities in Pakistan create historical narratives.