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Richard McGregor
Title
Associate Professor
Contact Information
Email
Phone: (615) 343-2462
Education
B.A. University of Toronto
M.A. and Ph.D. McGill University
Curriculum Vitae
Professor McGregor's area of expertise is Islam, particularly the medieval intellectual and mystical traditions. He teaches courses on Qur'an and Interpretation, Sufism, and Methodology in the Study of Religion. Before coming to Vanderbilt University in 2003, professor McGregor spent two years in Cairo, Egypt, at the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale working on Arabic manuscripts.
Representative publications
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He has published Sanctity and Mysticism in Medieval Egypt: the Wafa Sufi Order and the Legacy of Ibn Arabi (SUNY, 2004), a study of the Islamic conception of "saints" and religious authority. |
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Professor McGregor has co-edited two volumes of essays on Sufism in the pre-modern period: The Development of Sufism in Mamluk Egypt, and Sufism in the Ottoman Era (16th-18th C.) (IFAO Press, 2006 and 2010). |
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In collaboration with Lenn Goodman, he has produced a critical Arabic edition and English translation of The Case of the Animals versus Man before the King of Jinn (Oxford, 2009). Part of a tenth-century Iraqi encyclopedia, this philosophical text explores ethics, religion, and science, in the form of a fabled court case at which the animals of the world argue against humanity's claim of superiority over all creation. |
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The Case of the Animals versus Man is also available as a paperback, English translation only, from Oxford University Press, 2012. |
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Professor McGregor is currently at work on a study of Islamic religious practice and visual culture. |
Recent Articles
"Sufi Iconoclasm and the Problem of Comparative Religion" to appear in Les mystiques juives, chretiennes et musulmanes dans le Proche Orient medieval S. Pagani, M. Loubet and G. Cecere eds.
"Intertext and Artworks - Reading Islamic Hagiography," Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses (Spring, 2012).
"Sufis and Soldiers in Mamluk Cairo: Parading the Aesthetics of Agency" to appear in The Exercise of Power in the Age of the Sultanates I. Bierman and S. Denoix eds.
"The Problem of Sufism," Mamluk Studies Review 13.2 (2009).