Duke to Establish Islamic Studies Center, Create $1.5 Million Endowed Professorship
The center's primary focus will be undergraduate education, international outreach
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Durham, N.C. -- Duke University will create an Islamic studies center that will
focus on undergraduate education and expand partnerships with
universities in Muslim-majority countries, Provost Peter Lange
announced Wednesday.
“The Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC) will seek to advance interaction and understanding between citizens of American and Muslim cultures,” said Lange, the university’s top academic official. “The center’s ultimate objective is to provide interdisciplinary learning with a humanistic approach to the world’s future western and Muslim leaders. This complements many of the university’s top priorities, including advancing the undergraduate experience and promoting the internationalization of scholarship.”
A $1.5 million gift from James P. and Audrey Gorter for an
endowed professorship in Islamic studies will enable Duke to take
the first step toward establishing the center, Lange said. The
Gorters are the parents of two Duke alumni and two other
children.
Robert J. Thompson Jr., dean of Trinity College and vice provost
for undergraduate education, said the center will be an important
addition to the undergraduate curricular offerings, “not only in
terms of a focus on the Muslim world but also because of the
interdisciplinary perspective, the emphasis on the development of
language skills and the study abroad component in a Muslim country,
all of which are integrated into a coherent curricular
experience.”
The center’s principal focus will be undergraduate education,
said Bruce Lawrence, the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities
Professor of Religion at Duke. Lawrence, an Islamicist, will serve
as inaugural director of DISC; associate professor of Islamic
studies Ebrahim Moosa will be the center’s director of
research.
“What does not exist right now is a depth and breadth of courses
that accurately reflect the Muslim world,” said Lawrence, who
joined the Duke faculty in 1971. “This is almost a dream come true
for me.”
DISC will offer a four-year, interdisciplinary and integrated
curriculum that includes a first-year course on Islamic studies, at
least a semester of study abroad, foreign language studies (in
Arabic, Persian, Turkish or Urdu) and a senior thesis course.
Students who successfully complete the requirements will earn a
certificate.
“The new professorship in Islamic studies, together with DISC
and the certificate program in Islamic studies, charts a
cutting-edge and innovative approach to the study of Muslim
societies,” said Moosa, director of the Center for the Study of
Muslim Networks (CSMN) at Duke. “It examines Islam as a
civilization akin to any other.”
CSMN will be folded into DISC and no longer operated as a
separate center, but DISC will maintain the approach of studying
Muslim societies as networks, Moosa and Lawrence said. DISC also
will continue to support the “Islamic Civilizations and Muslim
Networks” book series, which is co-edited by Lawrence and published
by the University of North Carolina Press. Books in the series
include “Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop” (edited by Lawrence
and his wife Miriam Cooke, who is a professor of modern Arabic
literature and culture at Duke) and “Ghazali and the Politics of
Imagination,” authored by Moosa.
In conjunction with the certificate program, the center will
seek to enroll undergraduates and recruit visiting scholars from
Muslim-majority nations. It will also offer fellowships in Islamic
studies to graduate students.
“The international outreach -- through collaborative conferences
with scholars from abroad, residential fellowships and study-abroad
programs -- will enable a stimulating intellectual traffic to pass
through the Duke campus,” Moosa said. “Hopefully this will
contribute to the debates centered on Islam and Muslims for
students, faculty and the Duke community at large.”