Affiliated Faculty
Baldwin Wallace University
Indira Gesink
Indira Falk Gesink is Professor of History and Chairperson of the Department of History at Baldwin Wallace University. She earned her Ph.D. in History from Washington University in St. Louis in 2000, and holds a BA from Western Michigan University’s Lee Honors College. She is author of Islamic Reform and Conservatism: Al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam (I. B. Tauris, 2009, 2013), and “Chaos on the Earth: Subjective truths vs. communal unity in Islamic law and the rise of militant Islam” (American Historical Review, 2003), as well as other articles, and books on local history and historical theory. Her current research explores the ways in which Islamic legal and medical texts treat intersexuality—as disease, as a problem of gendered religious praxis, as a third sex. She teaches courses in the histories of Islam and the Middle East, world history, historiography, and gender studies.
Cheryl Toman
Associate Professor of French, Director of the Ethnic Studies Program, Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program,
Professor Toman’s single-authored book, Contemporary Matriarchies in Cameroonian Francophone Literature (Summa, 2008) is the first comprehensive text on the history of women’s writing in Francophone Cameroon and focuses specifically on women’s empowerment and using African constructs to interpret tradition. Defying the Global Language: Perspectives in Ethnic Studies (Teneo, 2013) is Toman’s most recent edited collection and the first publication to come out of research conducted within Case’s Ethnic Studies Program.
Case Western Reserve University
John Grabowski
John J. Grabowski is Krieger-Mueller Associate Professor in Applied History at Case Western Reserve University. interests and research span the fields of public and academic history. He specializes in the areas of immigration and ethnicity; local (Cleveland) urban history; and public history, particularly the fields of archives and museums. Grabowski also serves as Director of Research at the Western Reserve Historical Society.
In addition to teaching at the department, Grabowski also oversees the World Wide Web edition of The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History/Dictionary of Cleveland Biography, a joint project of Case Western Reserve University and the Western Reserve Historical Society.
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University
Justine Howe
Justine Howe specializes in contemporary Islam with a focus on Muslim communities in the United States. She earned a B.A. in History from Williams College (2003), an M.A. in the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion from the University of Chicago (2007), and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Northwestern University (2013). She joined the Department of Religious Studies in Fall 2013 and serves as a Core Research faculty member in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at CWRU.
Dr. Howe’s current book project, tentatively entitled The Construction of American Islam: Rethinking Pluralism and Authority after 911,examines how American Muslim identity is formed at the intersection of consumerist practices, institutional rituals, and everyday life. She is also developing other projects, including a historical-anthropological project on Islam in Cleveland and a multi-sited, transnational ethnography of Muslims who attend Catholic Schools.
Pete Moore
Pete Moore is Associate Professor of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University and serves on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Report. Prior to CWRU, he held positions at Concordia University in Montreal, Dartmouth College, and the University of Miami in Coral Gables. His research focuses primarily on issues of political economy, state society relations, and sub-state conflict in the Gulf and the Levant.
In 2008-2009, Professor Moore was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at Zayed University in Dubai, UAE. He earned his BA from the Virginia Military Institute, MA from the University of Virginia, and a PhD from McGill University.
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University
Ramez Islambouli
Ramez Islambouli, a native of Lebanon, moved to the United States in 1985 to pursue his academic studies. He holds an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and a graduate degree in bioethics, both from Case Western Reserve University. He is an adjunct professor of Islamic law at the Law School and Islamic Studies in the Dept. of Religious Studies and a full-time lecturer and section head of Arabic language in the Dept. of Modern Languages and Literature at CWRU. He is the faculty advisor for the
Muslim Students Association (MSA).
In the greater Cleveland area, Islambouli teaches Islamic studies at Cleveland State University, John Carroll University and Cuyahoga Community College. He serves as a Muslim Chaplain at University Hospitals and at Cuyahoga Hills Juvenile Correctional Facility. Currently he is the President of Uqbah Mosque Foundation in Cleveland.
Abedel Rahman Tayyara
Abed el-Rahman Tayyara is an Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. He earned his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at New York University. His dissertation is entitled, "The Reflection of non-Islamic Cultures in Early Islamic Universal Histories." He earned his BA in History and Classical Studies, and M.A. in Roman History at Tel-Aviv University. He taught at New York University before coming to Cleveland State University where he is teaching Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. Dr. Tayyara's teaching and research interests include a wide range of areas, such as Early history of Islam and the Middle East, Islamic historiography, Arabic language and culture,classical Arabic literature, the transmission of knowledge from Greek culture to the Islam, Semitic languages, and Byzantine history.
Cleveland State University
Neda Zawahri
Neda Zawahri is Associate Professor of Political Science at Cleveland State University. Zawahri’s scholarship encompasses an examination of the management of international river disputes, the role of international institutions in facilitating cooperation, environmental security, and the potential for conflict and cooperation between adversaries.
Specifically, Zawahri’s regional focus include the Middle East and South Asia, where she has conducted extensive field research that was funded by various grants. Zawahri has published extensively on these issue areas and she has co-edited several special issues. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
Cleveland State University
Cleveland State University
Stephen Cory
Stephen Cory is Associate Professor of History at Cleveland State. Dr Cory holds a joint appointment in the History and Religious Studies Departments at Cleveland State. His specialty is the history and religion of the Islamic Middle East and North Africa. His research focuses upon the use of religious imagery for political legitimization and upon the development of Hispano-Maghribi civilization in North Africa following the conquest of Islamic Spain during the late medieval and early modern periods.
Dr. Cory spent two years conducting research in Morocco (with funding from Fulbright and Fulbright Hays fellowships) and has presented his research at a number of scholarly meetings, including the Middle East Studies Association and the World Congress of Middle East Studies. Dr Cory is also Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at CSU, which was initially established with Title VI funding in 2005. The program hopes to eventually offer a major in Middle Eastern Studies at Cleveland State.
John Carroll University
Zeki Saritoprak
Zeki Saritoprak is Director of the Nursi Chair in Islamic Studies at John Carroll University, having held this position since 2003. He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Theology or The Science of Kalam from the University of Marmara, in Istanbul, Turkey. He earned his Master’s degree in Islamic Theology and Philosophy, and his B.A. in religion from the same university. He is the Founder and former President of the Rumi Forum for Interfaith Dialogue in Washington, D.C.
In addition to his current position at John Carroll, Saritoprak has also researched and taught courses at Harran University (Turkey), Georgetown University, the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. and Berry College in Rome, Georgia. In addition to presenting at numerous conferences and universities over the years, Saritoprak is also the author of several books and academic articles in Turkish, English, and Arabic.
Kent State University
Josh Stacher
Joshua Stacher is an Associate Professor in the department of Political Science. Stacher’s scholarship focuses on politics, state violence, protests, and social movements in the Middle East and North Africa. He is also a founding member of the Northeast Ohio Consortium on Middle East Studies (NOCMES), which focuses on public education in the area. In 2012-13, he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Stacher is currently working on a book project on Egypt's political transition after Mubarak. He is the author of Adaptable Autocrats: Regime Power in Egypt & Syria (Stanford UP, 2012) as well as other peer-reviewed journal articles. He is a regular contributor to and on the editorial board of MERIP's Middle East Report. Stacher has made media appearances and written commentary for NPR, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Foreign Affairs, Jadaliyya, and The New York Times, among others.
Sarah El-Kazaz
Sarah El-Kazaz is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Oberlin College. She received a BA from the American University in Cairo, an MA from New York University and her PhD from Princeton University.
El-Kazaz's research focuses on urban politics, the role of non-state actors in governance, globalization, and the micro-dynamics of urban resistance with a focus on the Middle East. Her current book project grows out of her dissertation entitled “Building Politics: Urban Transformation and Governance in Cairo and Istanbul,” where she investigates the politicization of urban planning and architectural design by actors as diverse as international NGOs, private entrepreneurs and state agencies in globalizing Cairo and Istanbul, and the contestation surrounding their projects.
She teaches courses on Middle East politics, urban politics, political economy and the politics of science and technology.
Sarah El-Kazaz
Sarah El-Kazaz is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Oberlin College. She received a BA from the American University in Cairo, an MA from New York University and her PhD from Princeton University.
El-Kazaz's research focuses on urban politics, the role of non-state actors in governance, globalization, and the micro-dynamics of urban resistance with a focus on the Middle East. Her current book project grows out of her dissertation entitled “Building Politics: Urban Transformation and Governance in Cairo and Istanbul,” where she investigates the politicization of urban planning and architectural design by actors as diverse as international NGOs, private entrepreneurs and state agencies in globalizing Cairo and Istanbul, and the contestation surrounding their projects.
She teaches courses on Middle East politics, urban politics, political economy and the politics of science and technology.
Oberlin College
Nadia Sahely
Nadia Sahely is the Chair of the World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department as well as Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Baldwin Wallace University.
Outside the classroom, she sponsors the weekly French conversation hour and is the faculty advisor of the French club, the Middle Eastern culture club and the BW international film series. For over 10 years, she has worked to bring an annual French and/or international film series to the BW campus and surrounding community. In 2007, she was awarded the Bechberger Award for Human Development and was named an Outstanding Educator by Ohio Magazine.
Her primary area of research is in 20th- and 21st-century French literary and interdisciplinary studies and critical theory. Her interests include work at the intersection of philosophy and literature, discourses on gender and sexuality, intellectual and cultural history, avant-garde literary groups and poetry. She has published on such writers as Georges Bataille and Colette Peignot and has completed a manuscript entitled “Vanguards of the Couple in Modern France: Reinventions of Love and the Social Bond from Charles Fourier to Luce Irigaray.” She also has a secondary interest in comparative literature, especially Francophone and modern Arabic literatures of the Machrek. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript entitled “(Re)Locations of Lebanon: Francophone and Transnational Lebanese Literature and Film from 1990 to the Present.”
Oberlin College
Baldwin Wallace College