Steeped in the Reformation’s emphasis on the individual as an autonomous agent, the Founders displaced God in favor of a…
Have it your way: Puerto Rico and the myth of American freedom
colonialism
“Whither a Muslim world?”
What is the “Muslim world?” Is it solely a descriptive term employed in the social sciences and humanities to name…
For the love of literature—A critique
No intervention in literature studies could be more urgent than the one offered in Michael Allan’s In the Shadow of…
The contested worlds of world literature
Reading Michael Allan’s In the Shadow of World Literature, I thought of two competing ways to understand political impasses. On…
Fluid indigeneity: Indians, Catholicism, and Spanish law in the mutable Americas
In this forum, “indigeneity” faces off against European “settler colonialism.” If the twenty-first century mode of conceptualizing indigenous resistance to…
Sacrality, secularity, and contested indigeneity
Indigenous peoples articulate their indigeneity within the political and legal language of secularism, even as it renders certain claims to…
Secular Christian power and the spiritual invention of nations
In the Americas, missionary colonialism prospered on the sharp edge of secular Christian power. Cutting up land with a blade…
New itineraries in the study of Islam and the state
From Wael Hallaq’s The Impossible State to Shahab Ahmad’s What is Islam?, recent scholarship on Islam and the state has…
Beyond the Secular State? Secularism, Empire, and Hegemony
Monday, November 14, 6:15 to 8:00 p.m. 403 Jerome Greene Hall, Columbia University Three orders of questions regarding secularism—genealogical, philosophical,…
The Politics of Islamic Law: An introduction
My new book, The Politics of Islamic Law, presents an approach to the study of religion, comparative politics and law…