Amira Mittermaier is an Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilization. She received her Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from Columbia University. Bringing together textual analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, her research to date has focused on modern Islam in Egypt. Her first book, Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination explores Muslim practices of dream interpretation, as they are inflected by Islamic reformism, Western psychology, and mass mediation. Besides offering insight into a highly central yet simultaneously marginalized religious practice, the book offers theoretical and methodological contributions to an emerging anthropology of the imagination. Professor Mittermaier’s current book project, tentatively titled The Ethics of Giving: Islamic Charity in Contemporary Egypt, examines both direct and institutionalized modes of alms-giving in post-revolutionary Egypt. Professor Mittermaier provides opportunities for student supervision in areas such as modern and postcolonial Islam, Sufism, anthropological approaches to religion, and ethnographic method and writing.
Opportunities for Student Supervision/Areas of Interest
- modern Islam
- Sufism and sainthood
- anthropological approaches to religion, ethnographic method and writing
- Egypt, Middle East
Primary Teaching
- Modern Islamic Thought
- Anthropology of Islam
- Anthropology of Religion
- Method and Theory in the Study of Religion
Selected Publications
2011. Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2010. “A Matter of Interpretation: Dreams, Islam, and Psychology in Contemporary Egypt.” In After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement, edited by Courtney Bender and Pamela Klassen. New York: Columbia University Press, 178-200.
2008. “(Re)Imagining Space: Dreams and Saint Shrines in Egypt.” In Dimensions of Locality: Muslim Saints, their Place and Space (Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam 2008), edited by Georg Stauth and Samuli Schielke. Bielefeld: Transcript, 47-66.
2007. “The Book of Visions: Dreams, Poetry, and Prophecy in Contemporary Egypt.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39 (2): 229-47.
Contact Information
Assistant Professor,
Department for the Study of Religion
Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
Undergraduate Studies (Eberhard-Karls-Universität, Tübingen), MA (Columbia), PhD (Columbia)
170 St. George Street, room 332
tel: (416) 946 3347
email: amira.mittermaier@utoronto.ca