Sonya Mutchnick

Sonya Mutchnick studies the religious and intellectual history of the classical Islamic world under Dr. Leor Halevi. In her dissertation, “Making the Body Islamic: The ‘Customs of Fitra’ and Religious Differentiation in the Formative Period”, she explores early Muslims’ efforts to define the body’s place in religion and society, tracing the construction of a recognizably Muslim body via practices such as circumcision and depilation, legal debates over styles of grooming and bodily adornment, sartorial laws, and physical descriptions of Muhammad and other holy figures. She is particularly interested in the roles which this contested Muslim body played in questions of communal differentiation, gender boundaries, social practice, and conceptions of human nature and sacred history.

Her broader research and teaching interests include early and classical Islam, the medieval Mediterranean, and the history of Judaism in the Near East and medieval Europe.