Comparative Literature Program

Dr. Stowasser is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, as well as a member of the CCAS core faculty and CCAS Executive Committee.

Dr. Stowasser holds an M.A. in Near East Studies from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Comparative Semitic and Islamic Studies from the University of Munster, Germany. Her publications include Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity, co-edited with Yvonne Haddad (AltaMira Press, 2004), a book length study on Women in the Qur'an, Traditions and Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 1994), an edited volume entitled The Islamic Impulse (CCAS, 1987, reprinted 1989), articles published in American, German, Arabic and Turkish journals and periodicals, and book chapters in collected volumes. Two of her shorter think-pieces appeared as CCAS Occasional Papers: Religion and Political Development: Comparative Ideas on the Ibn Khaldun and Machiavelli (1983, reprinted 2000), and A Time to Reap: Thoughts on Calendars and Millennialism (2000). The latter is the text of Dr. Stowasser’s address as outgoing 34th president of the Middle East Studies Association (1998-99). At present, Dr. Stowasser is working on a book on Gender Discourses in the Tafsir and Fatwa Literatures, a textbook on the Islamic Tafsir, and a book on Islam and Time.