Associate Professor of History
Email: Scott.Reese@nau.edu
Website: jan.ucc.nau.edu/~ssr7/
Office phone: (928) 523-9049
Office LA 344
Professional/Research Interests:
As a historian of Islamic Africa my interests are naturally broad with an emphasis on comparative history aimed at breaking down many of the regional and geographic categories currently in use across the academy. My main research interests are comparative Sufism, modern Muslim discourses of reform and the construction of world systems both in fact and imagination since 1500. Not surprisingly, these interests are mirrored in my teaching which includes comparative world, Islamic intellectual and modern and pre-modern African as well as European colonial histories.
Courses:
HIS 100: World History to 1200
HIS 220: Africa to 1820
HIS 221: Africa since 1820
HIS 230: History of Islamic Civilizations to 1500
HIS 231: History of Islamic Civilizations since 1500
HIS 498c: Islam in America
HIS 562: Approaches to World History
Recent Publications:
“The Best of Guides: Poetry and Reformist Discourse in the Majmu’at al-Qasa’id” The Journal of African Cultural Studies London: School of Oriental and African Studies (summer 2001).
“Urban Woes and Pious Remedies: Sufism in the Nineteenth Century Benaadir (Somalia)” in Africa Today v.43 n.3-4 1999.
“Tales which persist on the Tongue: Arabic literacy and the definition of communal boundaries in Sharif Aydrus’ Bughayt al-Amal” in Sudanic Africa v. 9, 1998 pp.1-17 (may be read on-line at www.hf.uib.no/i/smi/sa/sahome.html).
“Ziyara in the Horn of Africa,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam v. XI Leiden: Brill, 2002.
“The Adventures of Abu Harith: Muslim Travel Writing and Navigating Modernity in colonial East Africa” in Libraries and the Transmission of Knowledge in Islamic Africa R. Sean O’Fahey ed. (Leiden: Brill, Forthcoming).
"The Arabic Writings of Somalia," in The Islamic Writings of Eastern Africa Arabic Literature in Africa v.III. Leiden: Brill, Forthcoming.