The Carnegie Corporation of New York has named University professors Lawrence Rosen and Amaney Jamal Carnegie Scholars, with an award up to $100,000 for each to pursue work in Islamic studies over the next two years.
Rosen, an anthropologist, and Jamal, a political scientist, were among 16 winners chosen from a field of about 175 scholars nominated by their universities.
Rosen will use the grant to support two book projects, with his first book attempting to show that "ordinary" people can lead intellectually significant lives by examining the experience of four individuals in the Middle East.
"It's not their biographies, but their ideas," Rosen said. Collectively, the four individuals span the fields of politics, economics and religion.
Rosen's first "ordinary" person lived through the French colonial period in Morocco during the first half of the twentieth century. Rosen met him in Morocco during the liberation struggle of the 1960s, where Rosen was researching for his anthropology Ph.D.
This man offers "an unusual opportunity to see a full colonial history through the course of just one man's life," Rosen said.
The other three people include a Koranic prayer leader and grammar school teacher; a politically savvy entrepreneur; and a Jewish man who moved from Morocco to Israel in the 1970s.
Rosen's second book will be a collection of essays about various aspects of Islam and its culture.
He will spend nine months next year writing at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., which has awarded him a fellowship.
Amaney Jamal, who holds an appointment in the politics department, plans to travel to Kuwait and Jordan next year to research the relationship between Islam and democracy.
She will use the Carnegie grant to continue work on her second book project, which examines how Islam mediates ideas about citizenship and democracy in the Arab world. Jamal's previous book addressed the democratizing effects of associational life – whether participation in civic groups promotes democratic attitudes and behavior. She now wants to expand her research to encompass the interaction of Islam, political participation and everyday life — whether the religion empowers or hinders citizens from participating in government and civic organizations.
"There's a lot of interest in the ways Islam may or may not be inductive to the forms of democratic participation that we envision in the West," Jamal said.
She said her selection for the Carnegie grant is "very encouraging."
"It is rewarding in itself to have been recognized among established colleagues in the field," she said.
The Carnegie Corporation, created by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie in 1911, seeks to promote "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding." It ordinary selects about 20 Carnegie Scholars each year.
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