Heba Arafa Abdelfattah

Education and Degrees

Dr. Heba Arafa Abdelfattah graduated from Georgetown University in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. She was a visiting assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, and a research fellow at the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, London, UK. She comes to Grinnell from Yale University, where she was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer of Religious Studies in the Institute of Sacred Music & the Department of Religious Studies. Dr. Abdelfattah’s research interests and expertise range from classic religious texts, including the Qur’an and Prophetic tradition (Hadith), to modern Arabic literature, film, and popular culture. She is interested in Islamic thought in all its expressions from the 7th to the 21st centuries. She works with sacred scripture, literary texts, archival documents, films, and artistic production to understand questions of creativity and creative experiences at the intersection of discourses of Islam and modernity. Her forthcoming book Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt will soon be published by Edinburgh university press. Her articles appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as Religions, the Review of Middle East Studies, the International Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies (JIMS). Dr. Abdelfattah also serves as a board member for the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS) and a film review editor of  The Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies (JIMS).