Sam Kigar

Samuel Kigar is an assistant professor of Islam in the Department of Religion, Spirituality, and Society.

His research interests include the history of Muslim political, legal, theological, and mystical thought. He is specifically focused on Muslim conceptions of territoriality and spatial belonging, the history of Islam in the Maghreb, and religion and politics.

He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled, Islamic Terroir: Religion, Community, and Land in Modern Morocco. Two forthcoming articles address the themes of this book-in-progress. The first, "God's Feminine Shadow: Fatema Mernissi's Muslim Political Theology of Territory," is set to appear in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. The second is part of the edited volume, A World of Realms: A Long View of Diplomacy and Spatiality in the Premodern Islamic World, and is called, “Itineracy, Homecoming, and Territory in the Maghrib Over the Longue Durée."

Kigar also works on interreligious relationships and religion and literature. Within these areas, he has published on the intersections in the thinking of Muhammad Asad and Erich Auerbach and is at work on an article entitled, “Islam is the Everlasting Irony of Philosophy: Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire and the Constitutive Exclusion of Islam from European Philosophy.” He is also part of a multi-year working group on Olga Tokarczuk's novel, The Books of Jacob, based at Columbia University and Indiana University.

His teaching includes introductory and advanced courses on topics related to Islam, antisemitism and Islamophobia, and various courses on the intersection of religion, politics, and the environment. He also teaches Introduction to Jewish Studies.