My research focuses on early and classical Islamic history, particularly the development of Sunni and Shi'i socio-religious boundaries in those periods. I am interested in the ways in which the construction of historical narratives reflect and influence the scope and meaning of cultural symbols related to gender, identity, and authority.

John C. Reeves (Ph.D., Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion) is Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Much of his work probes the margins of conventionally conceived categories, exploring the overlaps and commonalities discernible among a host of Near Eastern fringe groups and texts which inhabit the twilight realms of cosmic arcana, apocalyptic fervor, and religious dualism in late antiquity and the medieval era.

A. David Lewis is a Faculty Associate with MCPHS University and holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Boston University. He is a founding member of Sacred & Sequential (a collection of scholars on comics and religion), co-editor of Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels, and author of the Eisner Award-nominated American Comic Books, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife.

Liran Yadgar, a Postgraduate Associate at the Judaic Studies Program of Yale University and a PhD Candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the University of Chicago, studies the social and intellectual history of Jews and Muslims in the Medieval Islamic World. He is particularly interested in the history of Jews in Mamluk Egypt and Syria (1250-1517), and Jewish-Muslim polemics. His dissertation, "The Judeo-Muslim Symbiosis Revisited: Jews and Muslims in the Later Middle Period (1200-1500 CE)," examines Jewish-Muslim intellectual exchange in three treatises from Egypt and the Maghrib.

Executive Director, ILEX Foundation