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Matthew Steele
Harvard University
Occupation
Graduate Student (Doctoral)
Contact
ABOUT
I am a Ph.D. student in Islamic Studies at Harvard University. My research centers on Islamic law and knowledge production in West and North Africa, with a focus on the intellectual history, texts, and communities that helped shape pre-modern scholarship. I have previously studied or conducted fieldwork in Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Guinea, Mauritania and Sudan. During the 2014/2015 academic year I served as a visiting research fellow in Sudan at the University of Khartoum’s Department of Islamic Studies, and in 2018/2019, as a research fellow in Mauritania's National Archive through the Institut Mauritanien de Recherches Scientifiques (IMRS).
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Sub Areas
Islamic Studies
Islamic Law
Maghreb Studies
13th-18th Centuries
19th-21st Centuries
African Studies
Geographic Areas of Interest
Mauritania
Sudan
Africa (Sub-Saharan)
Maghreb
Specialties
1) Islamic Africa 2) Islamic Law 3) Traditional
Languages
Arabic (fluent)
Education
MA | 2018 | Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) | Harvard University
MA | 2012 | Liberal Studies | Dartmouth College
BA | 2003 | Religion | Swarthmore College
Abstracts
Of Making (Unreliable) Books There is No End: A Critique of the Maliki Legal Canon in Nineteenth Century Mauritania Ijtihad in the Service of Taqlid: Repurposing Critique in the Contemporary Maliki School