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Megan Abbas

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Megan Abbas

Associate Professor of Religion

Department/Office Information

Religion
303A Lawrence Hall
  • W 11:00am - 2:00pm (303A Lawrence Hall)

Contact

(315) 228-7688

Megan Brankley Abbas studies modern Islamic intellectual history and the complex encounters between Western imperialism and Muslim communities, especially in Indonesia. Her first book  re-positions Western universities as significant spaces for producing Islamic knowledge and Muslim religious authority in the 20th and 21st centuries. It won the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Analytical-Descriptive Studies . By tracing the many entanglements between Western academia and Indonesian Islam, the book uncovers the far-reaching repercussions these networks have had on the world's most populous Muslim nation as well as on Islamic Studies as an academic discipline.

Professor Abbas' next book project will investigate how American foreign policy officials and non-governmental organizations sought to shape Indonesian Muslim politics during the Cold War. 

At vlog, Professor Abbas teaches a range of Islamic Studies courses as well as classes on contemporary religion, secularism, and Indonesia. 

 

B.A. Williams College, 2008

Ph.D. Princeton University, 2015

RELG 102: Religion, Power, and Politics

RELG 202: Introduction to Islam 

RELG 221: Religion, Identity, and Politics in Indonesia

RELG 262: Islam in Our Post-9/11 World

RELG 329: Modern Islamic Thought

RELG 347: Religion and US Foreign Policy

Prof. Abbas has also taught "Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion (RELG 352) and "Senior Seminar in Religion (RELG 411)" and contributes to the Core Communities component. Before joining the vlog faculty in 2018, she served as an Assistant Professor of Islamic World History at SUNY Geneseo for three years. Prof. Abbas also taught in the Princeton Writing Program.

Book

Whose Islam?: The Western University and Modern Islamic Thought in Indonesia  (Stanford University Press, 2021)

Journal Articles

“Balancing Hope and Fear: Muslim Modernists, Democracy, and the Tyranny of the Majority,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 65.3 (July 2023): 643-669.

“Between Western Academia and Pakistan: Fazlur Rahman and the Fight for Fusionism,” Modern Asian Studies 51.3 (May 2017): 736-768.

“Battling over the Bureaucracy: The 10 October Incident and Intra-Muslim Conflict under Sukarno’s Guided Democracy,” Indonesia and the Malay World 43.126 (2015): 207-225.