Marcia Hermansen, Ph.D.
	Title:	Professor , Director Islamic World Studies, Director of Minors for Theology & Religious Studies
	Office:	Crown Center 441
	Phone:	773.508.2345
	E-mail:	mherman@luc.edu

Personal Information

Dr. Marcia Hermansen is a Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago where she teaches courses in Islamic Studies and World Religions. She also directs the Islamic World Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Arabic and Islamic Studies. In the course of her research and language training she lived for extended periods in Egypt, Jordan, India, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan. She conducts research in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu as well as the major European languages. Her book, The Conclusive Argument from God, a study and translation from the Arabic of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi's, Hujjat Allah al-Baligha, was published in 1996. She also co-edited the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. Dr. Hermansen has also contributed numerous academic articles in the fields of Islamic thought, Islam and Muslims in South Asia, Muslims in America and Women in Islam.

Click here to visit Dr. Hermansen's personal website

Current Work:
Books in Progress - "American Sufis" for Oxford University Press, "Fethullah Gulen and the Gulen Movement", and "Shah Wali Allah's Treatises on Juristic Disagreement (Ikhtilaf) and "Allegiance to Legal Schools" Taqlid" for Fons Vitae. Co-editor, Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Muslim Relations (in preparation).

Interests:
Islamic Studies, Theory and Method in the Study of Religion, Comparative Religion, South Asian and Middle East Studies, Mysticism, Women and Gender, Religion in America, Critical Theory, Youth Cultures, Islamic Theology, Interfaith Dialogue

Selected Recent Publications:

• "Keeping the Faith: Convert Muslim Mothers in America and the Transmission of Islamic Identity" in Women Embracing Islam. Gender and Conversion in the West, Karin van Nieuwkerk (ed.) University of Texas Press, 2006, 250-276.
• "Identity Jihads: The Multiple Strivings of American Muslim Youth" in "Religious Perspectives on Spirituality in Childhood and Adolescence", Aostre Johnson and Gene Roehlkepartain (eds.) Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, 423-436.
• "Western Sufis and Sufi Literatures in the West" in Sufism in the West ed. John Hinnells and J. Malik Routledge, 2006, 28-48.
• "Religious and Cultural Aspects of Islamic Sufi Healing" in "Cultural Healing Systems: Beliefs and Practices" ed. James Pappas et alii, (Calgary, AB: Detselig Enterprises, 2007), 193-205.
• "The Academic Study of Sufism at American Universities" American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 24 (3, 2007):23-45.
• "Islamic Eschatology" in Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology ed. T. J. Winter, (Cambridge:2008), 308-324.