MESA Banner
Edith Szanto
University of Alabama
Occupation
Assistant Professor
Contact
Presidents Hall 209
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa AL 35487
United States
ABOUT
Edith Szanto is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. She previously taught at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. Dr. Szanto received her PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto in 2012. She has extensively published on Islam, particularly Twelver Shi'ism, in Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as issues relating to women and other minorities such as the Zoroastrians in the region. Dr. Szanto is currently the President of the Syrian Studies Association.
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Sub Areas
19th-21st Centuries
Gender/Women's Studies
Islamic Studies
Middle East/Near East Studies
Pop Culture
Pedagogy
Ethnography
Kurdish Studies
Diaspora/Refugee Studies
Kurdish
Geographic Areas of Interest
All Middle East
Iraq
Lebanon
Syria
Islamic World
Kurdistan
Specialties
Twelver Shi'ism
Shrine Visitation
Sufism
Languages
Arabic (fluent)
French (elementary)
German (native)
Hungarian (advanced)
English (native)
Hindi (elementary)
Kurdish (elementary)
Education
PhD | 2012 | Religious Studies | University of Toronto
Abstracts
Heterodoxy on the Periphery: Magic and Twelver Shi'ism in Contemporary Syria “That which your right hands possess”: liberation, otherness, and religion in a Syrian soap opera Economies of Piety at the Syrian Shrine of Sayyida Zaynab Contesting Charismatic Authority: Qadiri Sufism in Iraqi Kurdistan The 'Alimat of Sayyida Zaynab: Female Shi'i Religious Authority in a Syrian Seminary Healing in Contemporary Arab Twelver Shi‘ism Conversion as Class Mobility in Iraqi Kurdistan