Georgetown University

3700 O Street NW, ICC 306 F
P.O. Box 571046
Washington, DC 20057-1046
202-687-5743
202-687-2408 (fax)
arabic@georgetown.edu

The Department of Arabic & Islamic Studies

A particular goal of this department at the undergraduate level is to help learners reach advanced levels of communicative competence (proficiency) in both spoken and written Arabic. Moreover, in accordance with Georgetown's Jesuit ethos, we stress knowledge of Arabic as a path to living altruistically and creatively in a globally-integrated world. The Departmenthas recently established a Ph.D. program in Islamic Studies.

The Graduate Program in Islamic Studies

The Islamic Studies Ph.D. program at Georgetown seeks to advance knowledge and understanding of classical and modern Islamic religious thought and Islamic textual traditions, and to provide understanding of Islamic culture and intellectual history in the pre-modern and modern periods. The program offers undergraduate and graduate training in the study of the history, religion, culture, society, languages, literatures, and thought of the Islamic world, and introduces students to the traditional and modern scholarly approaches to the study of Islam.

In addition to philological training in Arabic, the primary language of Islam, the teaching and research of the department and other Georgetown faculty cover classical and modern Islamic history; the Qur’an,Hadith and other Islamic scriptural traditions; Islamic religion, theology, mysticism, jurisprudence, and sectarianism; the history of Islamic science and philosophy; classical and modern Islamic thought and movements; Arabic literature and linguistics; gender Studies; and Islam in the West. Moreover, Georgetown offers a rich variety of courses on the politics, anthropology, sociology and economies of the Muslim world.

Adopting interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to the study of Islam, the Islamic Studies Ph.D. program at Georgetown encourages collaborative work with faculty in various university departments and units. In addition to the core courses in the Arabic Department, Islamic Studies courses are offered in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and in the departments of History, Theology, and Political Science. The core faculty in the Department of Arabic provide basic disciplinary and philological training but the required courses are distributed across disciplines. These courses include, in addition to the departmental offerings that cover the primary Islamic scriptural traditions, all relevant courses in pre-modern and modern history, religion, law, politics, Islamic thought and movements, as well as courses in Arabic and Islamic literature, art and culture.

The Islamic Studies Ph.D. program at Georgetown combines all the disciplines that traditionally informed the study of Islam in the US: philology, Biblical studies, history, religious studies, and area studies. Moreover, the program complements the world-renowned strength of Georgetown faculty in modern Islamic studies by providing solid grounding in the study of Islam in the classical period.