Lecture on "The Impact of Islam on America and the Catholic Church" | Press Releases

A Professor of Religious Studies in Islamic Studies at Yale University since 1984 and a Jesuit priest, Gerhard Böwering, S.J., Ph.D., will address "The Impact of Islam on America and the Catholic Church." in a lecture at Fairfield University on Wednesday, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. in the Oak Room of the John A. Barone Campus Center.

The lecture is being presented by the Center for Faith and Public Life through the generosity of the Wabash Foundation grant that is supporting a dialogue on campus this semester about Christianity and Islam. Admission is free.

Professor Böwering, who has mastered the languages of Classical Arabic, Colloquial Egyptian, Persian, Urdu-Hindustani, French, German, Spanish, Greek and Latin, has written extensively on Islam. His books include "Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam: The Qur'anic Hermeneutics of the Sufi Sahl at-Tustari" (d. 283/896), and "The Minor Qur'an Commentay of al-Sulami" (Ziyadat haqa'iq al-tafsir), Beirut 1995, 2nd ed. 1997. He is at work on two more books, "Islam and Christianity: the Inner Dynamics of Two Cultures of Belief," to be published by Notre Dame University Press; and "The Dreams and Labors of a Central Asian Muslim Mystic."

His more than 70 articles include those in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, and the Encyclopaedia Iranica. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005-2006) and fellowships from the Institute for the Advanced Study, Princeton (1992 and 2006). In 2004-2005 he gave the Erasmus Lectures at Notre Dame University.

At Yale, Professor Böwering, chaired the Council on Middle East Studies from 1985-95. Previously he was an associate professor of Islamic Religion at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck, Princeton University, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

His professional affiliations include the American Philosophical Society, the American Oriental Society and Seminars in Arabic and Iranian Studies at Columbia University.

Professor Böwering's academic degrees include Baccalaureate, Deutsches Gymnasium Wurzburg; Ph.L., Philosophische Hochschule Pullach; Diploma, Panjab University; Th.L., Montreal; and Ph.D., McGill University.