Studies in Africa, Middle East, and South Asia Faculty
Chair
Assistant Professor
Email: sabaelia@grinnell.edu
Elias G. Saba received his PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. He was awarded the British Association of Islamic Studies – De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World 2018 for his dissertation. His first monograph, Harmonizing...
Senior Lecturer
2024–5 ACLS Fellow
Email: almohsen@grinnell.edu
I study the history of intellectual networks, ideas, critique, and print culture in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from the late eighteenth century to the present. My research and teaching interests include: modern MENA history, politics, and cultures; intellectual and literary histories of...
Professor
Email: dobetimo@grinnell.edu
Professor Dobe teaches courses on Hinduism, Bollywood and religion, Gandhi, Global Christianity and Sufism. His research focuses on comparing religions, traditions of sainthood and asceticism, and the history of western imperialism, religious pluralism and modernization. His book about Hindu and...
Professor
Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Email: elfenbei@grinnell.edu
I am a Professor of History and Religious Studies at 51±¾É« College, where I am also Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I graduated from Vassar College with a degree in political science, an education that still informs my work and my life. I have a...
Professor
Senior Faculty
Email: gibel@grinnell.edu
Katya Gibel Mevorach holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. She received her B.A. and M.A. in African Studies from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Gibel Mevorach is a Professor in Anthropology and American Studies at 51±¾É« College. Baccalaureate 2017: Professor...
Professor
Director of Zimbabwean Mbira Ensemble
Email: permanan@grinnell.edu
Tony Perman (ethnomusicology) is a specialist in the music of Zimbabwe and the semiotics of music and emotion. He has received degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (PhD), the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (MMus), and Kenyon College (BA). Before coming to...
Professor
Email: prevoste@grinnell.edu
Elizabeth Prevost, Frederick L. Baumann Professor of History, is a historian of modern Britain and the Empire/Commonwealth; colonial Africa; global Christianity; women and gender; and reading, publishing, and literary celebrity. She is the author of The Communion of Women: Missions and Gender in...
Assistant Professor
Email: tricoire@grinnell.edu
Professor Marion Tricoire (Ph.D., Emory University) is a teacher and scholar of African Literature and of the Francophone world. Her research interests include Sub-Saharan African literature, Francophone studies, urban humanities, postcolonial literatures, migration and diaspora studies, and...
Associate Professor
Email: youssef@grinnell.edu
Mervat Youssef is Associate Professor of Arabic. She holds a B.S. from the University of Helwan in Cairo, an M.S. from South Dakota State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. Her research interests include media constructions of identity, especially in relation to news coverage of...