People

Contact Info:
Tufts University
Department of Religion
Eaton Hall, Room 313
Medford, MA 02155

Office: 617-627-2362
Fax: 617-627-6615
Email
Download CV (pdf)
Translating Muslim Voices

Education:
Ph.D. University of Chicago
B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison

Research Interests:

• Life and Thought of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
• Religious Thought of al-Andalus and the Maghrib
• Sufism
• Contemporary Muslim religious discourse, especially in Egypt (see website: Translating Muslim Voices)

Background:
Ken Garden received his doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 2005. He is the author of The First Islamic Reviver: Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī and his Revival of the Religious Sciences (Oxford: 2014). His current research centers the development of Sufism in North Africa and Muslim Spain in the 12th and 13th centuries. He also has a website that presents and analyzes examples of religious discourse from different currents in contemporary Egyptian Islam. His studies have taken him to Germany, Spain, Egypt, where he spent a year at the American University in Cairo in 1995-96 and the fall semester of 2011, and Morocco, where he lived for two years in Fez and Rabat from 2000-2002, and more recently the summer of 2010.

Book:
The First Islamic Reviver: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and his Revival of the Religious Sciences

Courses Taught:

• Muhammad and the Qur'an
• Sufism
• Introduction to Islam
• Islam and Modernity
• Secularism
• Islam: Scripture, Authority, and Canon
• Abu Hamid al-Ghazali: a Window on Islamic Religious Sciences
• Revival and Reform in Islam

Selected Publications:

• "Coming Down from the Mountaintop: Al-Ghazālī's Autobiographies in Context," Muslim World Special Issue Celebrating the 900th Anniversary of al-Ghazālī , 101:4 (October, 2011), pp. 581-596.
• "Al-Māzarī al-Dhakī: Al-Ghazālī's Maghribi Adversary in Nishapur," Journal of Islamic Studies, 21:1 (2010), pp. 89-107.
• "From Courtier to Religious Scholar: The riḥla and self-reinvention of Abū Bakr Ibn al-'Arabī." Forthcoming, Journal of the American Oriental Society.
• "The Revival of the Religious Sciences in the Twenty-First Century: Su'ād al-Hakīm's Adaptation al-Ghazālī's Revival," forthcoming from Brill in conference proceedings of "al-Ghazālī and his Influence: A Workshop on the Occasion of the 900th Anniversary of his Death in 1111," Yale University, December 9-10, 2011.
• "Revisiting al-Ghazālī's Crisis through his Scale for Action (Mīzān al-'amal)," forthcoming from Brill in conference proceedings of "Islam and Rationality: the Impact of al-Ghazālī—an International and Interdisciplinary Conference at Ohio State University," November 10-12, 2011.

Selected Presentations:

• "Duncan Macdonald's Pioneering Study of al-Ghazālī: Paths Not Taken," A Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Duncan Black Macdonald, Hartford Theological Seminary, June 2, 2013. Watch the video >
• "Aims and Authorizing Strategies of Muhammad �Abdūh's al-Risāla fī al-Tawhid," "Seeds of Revolution Symposium," Tufts University, April 8, 2011.
• "Al-Ghazali in Contemporary Lebanon: Su'ād al-Ḥakīm's Project of Rereading His Revival," "al-Ghazālī and his Influence: A Workshop on the Occasion of the 900th Anniversary of his Death in 1111," Yale University, December 9-10, 2011.
• "Al-Ghazālī's Ethics Before and After the Crisis," "Islam and Rationality: the Impact of al-Ghazālī—an International and Interdisciplinary Conference," Ohio State University, November 10-12, 2011.
• "Law as Liferaft: the rihla of Abū Bakr Ibn al-'Arabī," 2010 annual meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, San Diego, November 18-21.
• "Revival through Reclassification: Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī's Revival of the Religious Sciences," Cambridge Symposium on Middle Eastern Studies: 'Knowledge and Language in Middle Eastern Studies," Cambridge University October 16-18, 2009.
• "Invocation of the Mujaddid Hadith in Islamic Thought," 2009.
• Meeting of the American Oriental Society, Albuquerque, March 13-16, 2009.

Awards:

• Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service fellowship, academic year 2013-14.
• Center for Arabic Studies Abroad III Fellowship in Cairo, Egypt, fall 2011.
• Center for the Humanities at Tufts faculty fellowship academic year 2010-2011.
• Qatar Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 2005-06.
• American Institute for Maghrib Studies for study in Morocco, 2001-02.
• Fulbright IIE for study in Morocco, 2000-01.
• Program for Cultural Cooperation: Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture/United States Universities, funding for research in Spain, fall 1998.
• Center for Arabic Studies Abroad year-long fellowship, 1995-96.