Political Theory Project

Nancy Khalek is Assistant professor of Religious Studies and specializes in Islam in the early classical period. She received her PhD in history from Princeton University in 2006. She is interested in issues of identity, narrative and authority in the transitional period from late antiquity to early Islam. In addition to her focus on the formative period of Islamic history, other interests include hagiography and historiography in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, relic and saint veneration, Christian-Muslim dialogue, and the relationship of material culture to religious life. Professor Khalek has conducted field and survey work in Syria, Turkey and Greece. She is currently working on a book on Damascus in the Umayyad era.