Emory will soon offer a new P.h.D. in Islamic Civilizations Studies. The university’s board of trustees recently approved the new program for Emory’s Laney Graduate School.
University officials say the new P.h.D program is needed because demand for specialists in the Islamic world and Islamic studies is high and is expected to remain that way for at least the next decade. Dr. Vincent Cornell chairs Emory’s department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies:
“With the population of Muslims exceeding one billion, we in the United States have to find ways to understand this religion and its people and also to find ways of interacting more successfully in non-confrontational ways with the Islamic world.”
Emory currently has an Islamic studies concentration in its Graduate Division of Religion. Cornell says the program will offer an interdisciplinary approach that will not exclude religion. But he says the program is designed primarily for students who wish to study Islamic civilizations beyond religious studies in areas of interest such as economics, political science, health and law. The program is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2013.
