Curriculum Vitae Ahmed Ragab The Richard T. Watson Associate Professor of Science and Religion Harvard Divinity School CSWR#213, 42 Francis Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138 ahmed_ragab@harvard.edu 617.496.9364 Education PhD, History and Philosophy of Science, Islamic History, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, 2010 MD, Qasr al-aini School of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo, 2006 Current Academic Positions and Affiliations Richard T. Watson Associate Professor of Science and Religion, Harvard Divinity School. Director, Science, Religion and Culture Program, Harvard Divinity School Associate Professor, Committee on the Study of Religion (CSR), Harvard University Affiliate Associate Professor, The Department of the History of Science, Harvard University Affiliate Associate Professor, The Standing Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Harvard University Member, Steering Committee of Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, Harvard University Member, Standing Committee on degrees in Medieval Studies, Harvard University Member, Steering Committee of Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI), Harvard University Affiliate Faculty, The Center for Global Health and the Environment (CHGE), Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health Visiting and consulting positions Dorothy Ford Wiley visiting professor, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Spring 2018. Member, Advisory Committee Science and Religion at The Smithsonian, National Museums of American History, Spring 2017 Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Spring 2016.
Select Awards Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Graduate Student Council and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2017 Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize from the Undergraduate Council at Harvard University, spring 2011 Certificate of Excellence and Distinction in Teaching (for Lecturers) from the Derek-Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, 2010 Certificate of Excellence and Distinction in Teaching (for Lecturers) from the Derek-Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, 2009 Certificate of Excellence Distinction in Teaching (for Lecturers) from the Derek-Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, 2008 Select Grants Research Award, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Sept 2016-Sept. 2018 Research Enabling Grant, Harvard University Provost Office, 2015-16, 2017-18
Bibliography (Published and in Preparation) Books The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion and Charity (Cambridge, 2015) Piety and Patienthood in Medieval Islam (Routledge, 2018) Medicine and Religion in the Life of an Ottoman Sheikh: Al-Damanhuri s Clear Statement on anatomy (Routledge, 2018 in production) Books in Preparation (under contract) [Co-authored with Katharine Park] Communities of Knowledge: Science and Religion in Europe and the Lands of Islam (Under contract with Princeton University Press) Around the Clock: Time in medieval Islamic clinical cultures (Under Contract with Johns Hopkins University Press) Peer-reviewed Articles (published or forthcoming): Illness and the city: Preliminary notes on the place of hospitals in Muslim pietistic spaces, Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, 2018 (forthcoming) Two students and a corpse: The semantics of disgust in the making of colonial knowledge, History and Technology, 2018 (forthcoming) In a clear Arabic tongue: Arabic, Science and the Medieval Islamicate Linguistic Regimes, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, 108:4, 2017 Rethinking Knowledge-Making: The Islamicate Postclassical Age and the Making of Decline, Journal of Early Modern History, 21, 2017. Pp. 1-12. Monsters and Patients: An Archeology of Medicine, Colonialism and Modernity, History and Theory, 55:4, 2016. Pp. 112-30. One, Two or More Sexes: Sex Differentiation in Medieval Islamicate Medical Thought, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 24: 3, 2015. Pp. 428-54. History of Science, Women and Islamic Cultures: Disciplinary Paradigms and Approaches 2003-2013, edited by Suad Joseph, Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2013. Pp. 151-75. Prophetic Traditions and Modern Medicine in the Middle East: Resurrection, Reinterpretation, and Reconstruction, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 132:4, 2012. Pp. 657-73. Epistemic Authority of Women in the Medieval Middle East, HAWWA: Journal of Women in the Middle East and Islamic World, 8:2, 2010. Pp. 181-216. Madman Walking: The Image of the Mad in Egyptian Press, Egypte-Monde Arabe, Troisième Série, 4, 2007. Pp. 227-246.
Book sections (published or forthcoming) Sira and Asbab al-nuzul: Context as Commentary in The Routledge Companion to the Quran, Daniel A. Madigan, and Maria Massi Dakake (Eds.), London: Routledge, 2019 (forthcoming) Eliminate the Muslim: Timeplay in the making of postcolonial future ethnoreligious identities Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, Spring 2018 Islam and Science in Routledge Companion to Religion and Science, ed. James W. Haag, Gregory R. Peterson, Michael L. Spezio, London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 45-57 Commentaries, Book reviews and Encyclopedia Entries Hospitals, In Peter E. Pormann (ed.), 1001 Cures: Contributions in Medicine and Healthcare from Muslim Civilisation (Manchester: Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation, 2017) "Al-Andalus, Cosmological Ideas." In Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Ricardo Amils, et. al. (Eds). Berlin: Springer, 2015 "Planetary Theories and Cosmology, Islamic Theories." In Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Ricardo Amils, et. al. (Eds). Berlin: Springer, 2015 With Allyssa Metzger. "Ikhwan Al-Safa." In Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Ricardo Amils, et. al. (Eds). Berlin: Springer, 2015 With Allyssa Metzger. "Al-Tūsī, Nasir Al-Dīn." In Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Ricardo Amils, et. al. (Eds). Berlin: Springer, 2015 With Allyssa Metzger. "Al-Bīrūnī, Abū Rayḥān." In Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Ricardo Amils, et. al. (Eds). Berlin: Springer, 2015 "Commentary on De Pee." Fragments: Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of ancient and medieval pasts 2, (2012) "Leigh Chipman, the World of Pharmacy and Pharmacists in Mamlūk Cairo. (Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series, 8.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. Pp. Ix, 318; Tables. $154. Isbn: 978-9004176065." Speculum 87, no. 01 (2012): 196-97 Articles and Book Sections in Preparation Islam as a postcolony: History and modernism in the making of ethnoreligious identities [Under review] Scientific Expertise and the Making of Islamic Legal Opinions: An Analysis of medical Fatwas [In preparation] Translation and the Making of a Medical Archive: The Case of the Islamic Translation Movement [In preparation for a special issue of Osiris Journal)
Select Unpublished Lectures and Papers Muslim Futures: Science Fiction, Islam and the Making of Ethnoreligious Futurity, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Boston, November 2017 A Beau Ideal for Whosoever Hopes for God : Piety, Medicine, and Prophetics in the Medieval and Contemporary Middle East, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Boston, November 2017 Making Local Medicine: Colonial Discourses and the Making of Modern Medicine in the Middle East, Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., November 2017. Islam, Science and History in the Making of a Postcolony, in Roundtable: Rethinking Histories of Science and Medicine: Beyond Eurocentrism and Postcolonialism, History of Science Society Annual Meeting, November 2017. Prophetic Medicine: Medical Piety in the Medieval and Modern Islamicate Societies, Keynote address, North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies, Boston, September 2017. Eliminate the Muslim : Science Fiction in the Making of Muslims as Future Subjects, The Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science, Boston, August 2017. Names to Remember: Memory and Amnesia in Medicine s Historical Epistemology, Keynote Address, Medicine and Knowledge in the Middle East Workshop, City of New York University Graduate Center, March 31 st, 2016 How to be a Patient: Patienthood and Medical Thinking in the Medieval Islamicate World, Yale Lectures in Medieval Studies, November 5 th, 2015 In the Search of a Good Story: Origins and Continuities in Writing the History of Science, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Minnesota, October 15 th, 2015 "From Plague to Ebola: The Social Life of Epidemics and the Making of Global Health, The Annual Da Vinci Lecture, Marshall University, November 7th, 2014 A House for the Sick and Poor: Hospitals, Religion, and Charity in a Topography of Public Health, Keynote address at Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health conference, Emory University, November 6th, 2014 Beyond Conflict and Harmony: Religion and Science in the Twenty-First Century at Cleveland City Club, March 7 th, 2014 Knowledge Will Set You Free: Critique as an Ethic of Liberation, Keynote address at Harvard Divinity School Diversity and Exploration Program, November 2013 Religion and Global Health at Harvard Global Health Institute, October, 2013 Scientific Expertise and Islamic Legal Opinions at STS-IGLP workshop on expertise in Science, Technology and Law, Harvard Kennedy School STS program, Harvard Law School, April 18-19, 2013 Hospitals as Road Posts in an Urban Map at Urbanism, Spirituality and Wellbeing Initiative Panel Themes in History, Harvard University, April 11, 2013 Animals for People and People for Animals: Animals in Medieval and Early Modern Islamicate Sciences at Communities like You: Animals in Islam; the Fifth Annual Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Conference at Harvard University, April 5-6, 2013
So We May Learn from Our Predecessors : Medical Biographies and the Arrangement of the Medical Community in the Medieval Middle East at the annual conference of the History of Science Society, San Diego, November 2012 Reading an Islamicate Hospital: Charity, Medicine and Tradition in Liminal Spaces at Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program Faculty Seminar, Harvard University, September 2012 Between Text(s) and Practice(s): Islamic Prophetic Medicine in Scientific and Religious Knowledge Regimes the annual Isthmus lecture presented to the Isthmus Society of Science and Religion, University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 2012 Disciplining and Persuading : Science, Religion and the Making of Knowledge the Inaugural Lecture of the Richard T. Watson Professorship of Science and Religion at Harvard University, Harvard Divinity School, March 2012 Moving Sexes and Shifting Genders: Medicine, Religion and Law in the Making of Medieval Islamicate Bodies invited lecture, Wesleyan University, February 2012 Bodies in Transformation: Castration and Castrates in Medieval Islamic Society presented at the Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion-Queer Studies in Religion Group, San Francisco, November 2011 Reiteration and representation: Asbab al-nuzul & the Discursive Formation of the Quranic Narrative presented at the Seventh Biannual Conference on the Qurʾān (The Qurʾān: Text, Society and Culture) at the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS, London, November 2011 Laws, Ethics and (Hi)Stories from Distant Lands: Islamic Law and the Making of the Medical Profession in the Medieval Middle East presented at the conference Global Perspectives on the History of Chinese Legal Medicine, University of Michigan Ann-Arbor, October 2011 The Question of Anatomy: Towards a Different Understanding of the Interactions of Religion and Science in the Medieval Middle East, presented at the Annual Conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Boston, November 2009 Prophets of Medicine and Medicine of the Prophet: Debates on Medical Theory and Practice in the Medieval Middle East, lecture for Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Harvard Society of Arab Students, Harvard University, November 2009 The Traveling Physician: Medicine in Travel Literature About Ottoman Egypt, presented at the Biannual Conference of the European Association for History of Medicine, Heidelberg, September 2009 Bīmāristān al-manṣūrī: State, Religion and Medical Practice in Egypt 1285-1382, presented at the 23rd International Conference of History of Science and Technology, Budapest, July 2009. Notes on Epistemological Debates in the Medieval Middle Eastern Science and Philosophy, lecture for Early Science Working Group, the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, April 2009 On Methodology: New Approaches to the Study of Medieval Islamic Hospitals, presented at The Meeting of the Three Societies, Oxford, July 2008 How to Write the History of Medieval Islamic Hospitals? keynote lecture at the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, March 2008. Academic Memberships
International Society for Science and Religion (Elected) Commission on History of Science and Technology in Islamic Societies (Elected) History of Science Society American Academy of Religion Middle East Studies Association