Dr Karen Bauer
Biography
Dr. Karen Bauer is a Research Associate in the Qur’anic Studies unit. She became interested in the study of Islam and the Muslim world when working as an English teacher in Jordan after her BA in painting and social sciences from Bennington College. Dr Bauer went on to complete an MA in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona in 2001, and obtained her PhD from Princeton University in 2008. Dr. Bauer is interested in the Qur’an and its interpretation, in Islamic intellectual history, gender, and slavery in Islam.
She has organised a number of conferences and forums, and has edited a volume, the first to take an in-depth look at theories and methods of interpretation in the genre of the Qur’an Commentary. This book, The Aims and Methods of Qur’anic Exegesis, 8th - 15th Centuries, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in association with the IIS (expected pub. 2012). She is currently writing a monograph, From a Single Soul: Women and Men in Muslim Scripture and Exegesis, which incorporates her PhD work on pre-modern interpretations of Qur'anic verses on women's status with recent work on modern interpretations of those verses, and interviews conducted in Syria and Iran. The scope of this work enables her to analyze the history of Qur'anic interpretation through verses on women's status, while also showing how changing ethical notions affect the interpretation of the Qur'an. She is also working on an anthology of translations of Qur'anic verses and commentaries on the subject of women.
Publications
Book
‘The Gender Hierarchy and the Spiritual Hierarchy in Fatimid Isma‘ili interpretations of the Qur’an’ (with Abdeali Qutbuddin) (submitted for review).
‘Some remarks on the introductions to tafsir, 10th – 12th centuries’ submitted with the volume The aims and methods of Qur’anic Exegesis (8th – 15th centuries).
‘The Muslim exegete and his audience, 5th/11th-6th/12th centuries,’ The Islamic Scholarly Tradition: Studies in History, Law and Thought in Honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook, ed. Ahmed, Bonner and Sadeghi, Brill, 2011, pp. 293-315.
‘Debates on Women’s Status as Judges and Witnesses in Post-Formative Islamic law,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 130.1 (2010) pp. 1-21.
‘The male is not like the female (Q 3:36): The Question of Gender Egalitarianism in the Qurʾān,’ Religion Compass 3/4 (2009), pp. 637–654.
‘“Traditional” Exegesis of Q 4:34,’ Comparative Islamic Studies, 2.2 (2006), pp. 129 – 142.
Book Reviews
Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property and Law in the Wider The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an ed. Andrew Rippin, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 129.2 (2009) pp. 307-311. Woman’s identity in the Qur’an, by Nimat Hafez Barazangi, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 4:3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 131-34. A Traditional Mu‘tazilite Qur’an Commentary, by The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition, by Film Veiled Voices (2009) a documentary film: writer and co-producer; the film is directed and produced by Brigid Maher. Veiled Voices follows Muslim women religious leaders in the Middle East, exploring their relationship to tradition and modernity.