Valerie Hoffman, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, received her Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Chicago in 1986. She teaches a number of courses on Islam and Muslim culture, including courses on the Qur'an, Muslim mystics and saints, women in Muslim societies, Islam and society in the modern Middle East and North Africa, and Muslim Christian interactions. Her areas of research specialization include Sufism in modern Egypt, Islamic gender ideology, Ibadi Islam in Oman and East Africa, Muslim women's religious lives, Islam in the Hadramawt region of Yemen, and contemporary Islamic movements.

She has done research in Egypt, Oman, Zanzibar and Yemen, and in 1999 she was invited to Iran to participate in a conference on Islamic philosophy. She has served on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and also on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, chair of that association's Ethics Committee, and the editorial board of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

At the University of Illinois she is currently serving on the Executive Committee of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and on the Foreign Languages and Area Studies fellowships committee for the Center for African Studies. Her publications include Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995); "Muslim-Christian Encounters in late Nineteenth-Century Zanzibar," MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 5 (Fall 2005); "Women, Gender and Sufi Orders, Practices: Egypt," pp. 762-764, in Family, Law and Politics: Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, edited by Suad Joseph. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005; "The Articulation of /Ibadi/ Identity in Modern Oman and Zanzibar," Muslim World 14, 2 (April 2004): 201-216; Contending Legitimacies: Muslim Perspectives on Human Rights, in A Force Profonde: The Power, Politics, and Prospects of Human Rights, ed. Edward Kolodziej. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, pp. 45-68.

Curriculum Vitae (Word)

Courses Taught
RLST 213 Introduction to Islam-ACP
RLST 214 Introduction to Islam
RLST 223 Qur'an: Structure and Exegesis
RLST 260 Mystics and Saints in Islam
RLST/ANTH/GWS 403/HIST 434 Women in Muslim Societies
RLST/PS 408 Islam in Modern Society
RLST 410 Islam in Egypt (Study Abroad Course)
RLST 481 Rethinking Muslim Ethics in the Global Age
RLST 482 Muslim-Christian Interactions
RLST 494 Islam in East Africa