Meet the Faculty

Dorothea Schulz

• Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D. at Yale University, 1996

• Habilitation at Free University Berlin, Germany, 2005

Contact Information

Background

• Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University 2005/06
• Fellow, International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, University of Leiden, The Netherlands, 2005
• German Science Foundation Research Grant
• Wilhelm von Humboldt Foundation Summer Institute Fellowship
• National Science Foundation Research Fellowship

I received my Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from Yale University and my Habilitation (second doctoral degree required for promotion in the German academic system) from the Free University, Berlin, Germany.

My research, publications, and teaching are centered on Islam in Africa, the anthropology of religion, gender studies, media studies, public culture, and the anthropology of the state. I have extensive field research experience in West Africa, particularly in urban and rural Mali. I recently completed a book manuscript ("Pathways to God. Islamic revival, mass-mediated religiosity and the moral negotiation of gender relations in urban Mali") on Muslim revivalist groups in Mali that operate beyond the confines of the nation-state and promote a relatively new conception of publicly enacted religiosity (significantly displayed in feminized signs of piety). This work draws on the anthropology of religion and on media studies, as well as on scholarship that examines gender and religion as modes of producing difference in a transnational context. I bring to my research and teaching a strong background in critical theory, political anthropology, and the anthropology of social organization.

Recent publications

2007  Evoking moral community, fragmenting Muslim discourse. Sermon audio-             recordings and the reconfiguration of public debate in Mali. Journal of Islamic Studies 26: 39-71.

2007 Competing sartorial assertions of femininity and Muslim identity in Mali. Fashion Theory 11(2/3): 253-280.

2006 Mélodrames, desires et discussions. Mass-media et subjectivités dans le Mali urbain contemporain. In: Jean-François Werner (ed.): Médias visuels et femmes en Afrique de l'Ouest, pp. 109-144. Paris: l'Harmattan

2006 Promises of (im)mediate salvation. Islam, broadcast media, and the remaking of religious experience in Mali. American Ethnologist 33(2): 210-229.

2003 ‘Charisma and Brotherhood’ Revisited: Mass-mediated Forms of Spirituality inUrban Mali. Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (2):146-171.

2003 Political Factions, Ideological Fictions. The Controversy over the Reform of Family Law in Democratic Mali. Islamic Law and Society 10(1): 132-164,

2002 The world is made by talk: female youth culture, pop music consumption, and mass-mediated forms of sociality in urban Mali. Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 168, 42 (2): 797-829.

2001 Perpetuating the Politics of Praise: Jeli praise singers, radios and political mediation in Mali. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag