Kathryn Kueny

Kathryn Kueny is Professor of Theology at Fordham University, where she also serves as Director of the Middle East Studies and Religious Studies programs. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in the History of Religions, working primarily under the mentorship of Jonathan Z. Smith. Over the past 20 years of her career, Professor Kueny has taught a number of courses that explore topics in Islam, method and theory in the study of religion, and Gender Studies. These interests are reflected in her two books, The Rhetoric of Sobriety: Wine in Early Islam, and Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medieval Muslim Discourse and Practice, which probe more deeply the ethical, theological, practical and rhetorical struggles humans undergo to render comprehensible everyday life experiences and natural phenomena not readily or easily understood.

Professor Kueny is currently working on a new project, entitled Ecologies of Health and Disease in Medieval Muslim Medicine, Law, Practice and Belief. This work explores the variable interplay of body, mind, nature, time, moral disposition, social interaction and divine encounter that marks individuals (to both self and other) as healthy or ill.

BA, University of Wisconsin, Madison
MA Divinity, University of Chicagobr />PhD History of Religions, University of Chicago

Medieval Islam

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim encounters/exchanges

Method and Theory in the Study of Religions

Gender Studies

Books

Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medieval Muslim Discourse and Practice. Albany: SUNY Press, 2013. [FINALIST- 2014 American Academy of Religion Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, in the textual studies category]

The Rhetoric of Sobriety: Wine in Early Islam. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.

Articles

"Marking the Body: Resemblance and Medieval Muslim Constructions of Paternity." In The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30.1 (Spring 2014): 65-84.

"Reproducing Power: Qur'ānic Anthropogonies in Comparison." Paul M. Cobb (ed.), The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012 (refereed): 235-260.

"The Cure of Perfection: Women's Obstetrics in Early and Medieval Islam." In Seeing the Medieval. Edited by Ena Heller and Patricia C. Pongracz. New York & London: MOBIA & Dan Giles, Ltd., 2009, 187-198.

"The Birth of Cain: Reproduction, Maternal Responsibility, and Moral Character in Early Islamic Exegesis." The History of Religions, Vol. 48, No. 2 (November 2008) 110-129.