curriculum vitae

I’m a scholar of religion, gender, and ethics. I mostly write about the Muslim tradition, including premodern law and prophetic biography and modern intersections of Muslim and Western discourses about gender and sexuality. I’m currently working on Women in Muslim Traditions, geared toward students and general readers, as well as a study of the gender politics of academic Islamic Studies. Outside of my specialization, I also work on popular fiction, looking at human flourishing in J.D. Robb's futuristic police procedurals and race, religion, and stereotypes in novels by Suzanne Brockmann and Nora Roberts.

I’ve been a faculty member at Boston University’s Department of Religion since 2006. Before that, I held research and teaching fellowships at Brandeis University and Harvard Divinity School. I teach undergraduates and graduate students.

I earned my MA and PhD in Religion from Duke University. I attended Stanford University as an undergraduate, finishing with a BA in History and honors in Feminist Studies.

I’ve held a number of service and leadership roles in the American Academy of Religion, including Status Committee Director. I’m a past president of the Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics.

I’m originally from the Boston area. Outside of my professional activities, I’ve been involved with Oxfam America since 2010 and have served on its Leadership Council since 2013. In 2018, I co-founded Believers Bail Out, an initiative to free needy Muslims from pre-trial detention using zakat and to educate about money bail and mass incarceration.