Christianity and Islam in the Middle East: From A Common History Toward a Common Present?, discussion with Stephen Davis and Frank Griffel (Yale University), Yale University, Luce Hall, April 24, 4–6 pm

The Middle East has been the birthplace of three of the world's greatest monotheistic religions, a legacy that is increasingly coming under threat as religious communities, which date back to the very origins of both Christianity and Islam, are violently attacked and displaced. With this event, we are invited to meditate on the past and future of this rich and vibrant legacy and the challenges it faces in the 21st century.

Stephen Davis is Professor of Religious Studies, specializing in the history of ancient and medieval Christianity, with a special focus on the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. In 2013, he was appointed Master of Pierson College, one of the twelve residential colleges at Yale. Prior to coming to Yale in 2002, Davis lived in Egypt for four years, where he was professor and academic dean at an Arabic-language theological college in Cairo. His areas of teaching and research at Yale include the study of women and gender, pilgrimage and the cult of the saints, the history of biblical interpretation and canon formation, Egyptian Christianity, Arabic Christianity and its relation to Islam, early Christian art and material culture, and the application of anthropological, sociological, and literary methods in the study of historical texts.

Frank Griffel: After studying philosophy, Arabic literature, and Islamic studies at universities in Göttingen (Germany), Damascus, Berlin, and London, Frank Griffel received his PhD in 1999 from the Free University in Berlin. In his thesis he wrote about the development of the judgment of apostasy in classical Islam. After that he worked as a research fellow at the Orient Institute of the German Oriental Society in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2000 he came to Yale where he teaches courses on the intellectual history of Islam, its theology (both classical and modern), and the way Islamic thinkers react to Western modernity.