Karen Ruffle
Areas of interest
- South Asian Religions
- Islam
- Shiʿism
- Material Culture
- Religious Built Space
- Alternate Archives
- Religious Sensorium
- Cultural Memory
- Ritual
- Devotional Literature and Hagiography
- India; Pakistan
Biography
Karen Ruffle, Professor of History of Religions (UTM) and the Study of Religion (UTSG), specializes in the study of South Asian Shiʿism. Her research and teaching interests focus on devotional texts, ritual practice, and Shiʿi material practices in South Asia. She has conducted field research in India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Her books include Gender, Sainthood, and Everyday Practice in South Asian Shi’ism (2011) and Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia (2021). Her current projects include a monograph titled, Building the City of Haidar: Kingship, Urban Space, and Shiʿi Ritual in Qutb Shahi Hyderabad and a large-scale study of South Asian Shiʿi material culture and sensorial practices titled, Baraka Bodies: Shiʿi Materiality, the Sensorium, and Ritual in India and Pakistan.
Karen is co-Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Islam in Asia, and she is co-editor of the series Religion and Society (DeGruyter). She is the convenor of the international Working Group Sensing Shiʿism, which brings together a collective of junior and mid-career scholars engaging with an emergent field of Shi'i studies engaging with ethnographic, theoretical, and empirical research on material culture, the sensorium and ritual practice.
Select publications
Articles
- “Presence in Absence: The Formation of Reliquary Shiʿism in Qutb Shahi Hyderabad.” Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief 13:3 (September 2017): 329-353.
- “Presence in Absence: Relics and Their Role in Ḥaidarābādī Shīʿism.” Special issue Hindi Farsi, ed. by Firoozeh Papan-Matin (in Persian). Iran Namag 1:3 (Fall 2016): 178-195.
- “Guises of the Protective Hand: The ʿAlam and the ‘Domestication’ of Qutb Shahi Shiʿism,” South Asian Studies 32:1 (2016); 54-67.
- “Wounds of Devotion: Re-Conceiving Mātam in Shiʿi Islam.” History of Religions 55:2 (November 2015): 172-195.
- “Islam: Saints and Sacred Geographies: South Asia.” Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, edited by Suad Joseph. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
- “An Even Better Creation: The Role of Adam and Eve in Shiʿi Narratives about Fatimah al-Zahra.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81:3 (September 2013): 791-813.
- “Women’s Religious Celebrations.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women, edited by Natana DeLong-Bas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
- “Women and Gender Themes in Shiite Devotional Literature.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women, edited by Natana DeLong-Bas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
- “Muharram.” Oxford Bibliographies Online: Islamic Studies. Edited by Tamara Sonn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com
- “Mutʿa.” Oxford Bibliographies Online: Islamic Studies. Edited by Tamara Sonn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com
- “May You Learn from Their Model: The Exemplary Father-Daughter Relationship of Mohammad and Fatima in South Asian Shiʿism.” Journal of Persianate Studies 4:1 (2011): 12-29.
- “May Fatimah Gather Our Tears: The Mystical and Intercessory Powers of Fatimah al-Zahra in Indo-Persian, Shiʿi Devotional Literature and Performance.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 30:3 (November 2010): 386-397.
- “Who Could Marry at a Time Like This? Debating the Mehndi ki Majlis in Hyderabad.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 29:3 (November 2009): 502-514.
- “’Discovering’ the Gendered Dimensions of Shiʿism: Recent Scholarship on Gender in Shiʿi Ritual.” Contemporary Islam 3 (2009): 167-176.
- “Curing Iranian Occidentosis: Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s Poly-Methodic Prescription.” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 8:1 (Spring 2001), pp. 59-66.
Books and/or Chapters
- Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (forthcoming 2019).
- Gender, Sainthood, and Everyday Practice in South Asian Shiʿism. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks Series. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Xvi + 222pp. Paperback reprint: University of North Carolina Press (February 2014) Indian Reprint: New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers (September 2013)
- Co-authored with Zulfikar Hirji. “Shiʿi Diasporas.” In The Shiʿi World: Pathways in Tradition and Modernity. Edited by Farhad Daftary, Shainool Jiwa and Amyn Sajoo, 326-348. Muslim Heritage Series. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015. 50% authorship.