Meet the Scholar: Snapshots of Intellectual Journeys

Kathryn Kueny – Fordham University

University Website

Kathryn Kueny is Professor of Theology at Fordham University, where she also serves as Director of the Middle East Studies and Religious Studies programs. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in the History of Religions, working primarily under the mentorship of Jonathan Z. Smith. Over the past 20 years of her career, Professor Kueny has taught a number of courses that explore topics in Islam, method and theory in the study of religion, and Gender Studies. These interests are reflected in her two books, The Rhetoric of Sobriety: Wine in Early Islam, and Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medieval Muslim Discourse and Practice, which probe more deeply the ethical, theological, practical and rhetorical struggles humans undergo to render comprehensible everyday life experiences and natural phenomena not readily or easily understood.

Professor Kueny is currently working on a new project, entitled Ecologies of Health and Disease in Medieval Muslim Medicine, Law, Practice and Belief. This work explores the variable interplay of body, mind, nature, time, moral disposition, social interaction and divine encounter that marks individuals (to both self and other) as healthy or ill.