Islam’s Great Awakening

Fairfield, Conn. – Gerhard H. Bowering, S.J., Ph.D., professor of Islamic Studies at Yale University, will speak on “Islam’s Great Awakening: Its Challenge for the West,” as part of Fairfield Univeristy’s Bellarmine Lecture Series on Wednesday, March 20, at 7:30 p.m., at the Quick Center. Admission is free, but tickets are required through the box office.

A member of the Fairfield Jesuit Community, Father Bowering has been a student of Islam for many years, He received his Ph.L fom Philosophische Hochschle Pullach-Munich, Germany and a diploma in Islamic Studies rom Panjab University, Pakistan. He earned a Th.L. from the Colllege I.C and Universite de Montreal, Canada and his doctorate in Islamic Studies from McGill University in Montreal.

From 1975 to 1984 Father Bowering was assistant and then associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been with Yale since 1985, serving as a chair of the Council on Middle East Studies until 1994. He was appointed professor of Islamic Studies in 1984.

Father Bowering was the Visiting Mellon Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1992 and was a Research Fellow a the American Research Center in Egypt in 1990. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Oriental Society and Deutsche moregenlandische Gesellschaft.

In addition to English, Father Bowering’s languages include Arabic, French, German, Greek, Latin, Persian, Spanish and Urdu. He has published extensively, including “The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam.” His book, “Wie die Muslime denken” is due out in 2002, while a second, “The Idea of Time in Islam,” is projected for 2003.

His numerous articles include “Chronolgy in the Qu’an,” in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, “Ghazzali, Abu Hamed Mohammad,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica; “From the Word of God to the Vision of God,” in Le voyage initiatique en terre d’Islam; “Jessuits and the Islamic World at the Beginning of a New Millennium,” in Discovery, and “Islam at the Crossroads,” in Leap: A Forum for the Religious Discussion at Yale. Five articles are in process, including “Marking Time and Eternity in Islam,” for Eranos Jahrbuch, to be published this year.