Occupation
Associate Professor
Contact
Secondary Phone: (517) 432-7048
Fax: (517) 432-2363
310 Baker Hall
655 Auditorium Rd.
Michigan State University
East Lansing
MI
48823
United States
ABOUT
Mara A. Leichtman is associate professor of Anthropology at Michigan State University and a 2020-2021 Luce/ACLS Fellow in Religion, Journalism and International Affairs. She is a scholar of Middle East-African connections and a specialist on Shi’i Islam. Dr. Leichtman was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at American University of Kuwait (2016-2017) where she launched a research project that examines Islamic humanitarianism in the Gulf directed to global economic development, in particular in Africa. She is author of Shi‘i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal (Indiana University Press, 2015) and co-author of New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). She also co-edited two special journal issues: The Shiʿa of Lebanon: New Approaches to Modern History, Contemporary Politics, and Religion in Die Welt des Islams (2019) and Muslim Cosmopolitanism: Movement, Identity, and Contemporary Reconfigurations in City and Society (2012). Her articles appeared in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Anthropological Quarterly, Contemporary Islam, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Religion in Africa, Journal of Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society and Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Discipline
Anthropology
Sub Areas
African Studies
Colonialism
Democratization
Diaspora/Refugee Studies
Globalization
Ethnography
Identity/Representation
Islamic Studies
Middle East/Near East Studies
Nationalism
Minorities
Modernization
Transnationalism
Geographic Areas of Interest
Africa (Sub-Saharan)
Islamic World
Iran
Lebanon
Europe
Kuwait
Languages
French (advanced)
Arabic (intermediate)
Education
PhD
| 2006
| Anthropology
| Brown University
Abstracts
The Struggle for Representation of the Muslim Community of Britain Post-9/11 and 7/7
The ‘Africanization’ of Ashura in Senegal
Transnational Networks between Kuwait and East Africa: The Case of a Shi‘i Islamic NGO in Tanzania
