Islam and Muslim societies, the Middle East, political and social theory, and ethnographic approaches to emotion, language, and religious ritual
Office Hours: W 11:00-1:00
481 Main Street, Rm 105
Professor Tambar studies Muslim communities in the Middle East, focusing specifically on the intersections of politics, language, aesthetics, and religion. He received a Ph.D. (2009) in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and is currently working on a book that interrogates how secularism has calibrated and regulated – rather than eradicated – the tensions animating sectarian differences in modern Turkey. The book contributes to an understanding of the forms of power and authority that subtend institutionalized regimes of secularism and pluralism in the Muslim world. He has recently published an essay that explores contemporary controversies surrounding the refashioning of secular political subjectivities: “Secular Populism and the Semiotics of the Crowd in Turkey,” Public Culture 21 (3), 2009.
“In my research and teaching I approach religion as a category constituted within social and political institutions in modern and postcolonial contexts. My work explores disputes that arise when religious practice contravenes its institutional authorization. In particular, I am interested in the ways in which public expressions of religion challenge the theory and practice of secular democracy, particularly in the Middle East. My courses often make use of ethnographic studies that emphasize comparative perspectives on the contextual embedding of religious practice. I challenge students to consider the historical trajectories that have given shape to the boundaries between the religious and the secular in the contemporary world.”
