Amira Mittermaier

Amira Mittermaier is an Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of Anthropology. She received her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology from Columbia University and is cross-appointed to the Anthropology Department. 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. Professor Mittermaier’s current book project, tentatively titled The Ethics of Giving: Islamic Charity in Contemporary Egypt, examines different Islamic modes of 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.

Education

Ph.D. (2006, Columbia University)

Courses

• Anthropology of Religion
• Living Islam
• Anthropology of the Middle East
• Craft of Social/Cultural Anthropology
• Reading Ethnography

Major Awards and Grants

2021.  Guggenheim Fellowship, John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation  

2014.  Named to Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists

2012-13.  Chancellor Jackman Research Fellowship,  Jackman Humanities Institute Fellowship, University of Toronto

2011.  Winner of the Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, awarded by Society for the Anthropology of Religion, for Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011)

2011.  Winner of Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, second place, awarded by Society for Humanistic Anthropology, for Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011)

2011.  Winner of Award for Excellence in the Analytical-Descriptive Studies category, awarded by American Academy of Religion, for Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011)

2011.  Winner of Chicago Folklore Prize, awarded jointly by the American Folklore Society and the University of Chicago, for for Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011)

Publications

Books

forthcoming.  Ninety-Nine: A Kaleidoscopic Portrait of God

2019.  Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

2011.  Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Articles and Chapters

forthcoming  "Towards an Ethnography of God." American Anthropologist. 

2025.  "Religious Afterlives of a Revolution." Cultural Anthropology 40(1)

2025 “Introduction.” Special Section “Divine Human Relations after the Arab Spring.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (CSSAAME), co-author: Joud Alkorani, pp. 83-90.

2025 “God, Islam, and Anthropology.” In Conceptualizing Islam: Current Approaches, edited by Paula Schrode, Frank Peter, and Ricarda Stegman. Routledge, 233-246.

2024 “The Gift of Food: An Islamic Ethics of Care.” In Care in a Time of Humanitarianism: Stories of Refuge, Aid, and Repair in the Global South, edited by Arzoo Osanloo and Cabeiri Robinson. Berghahn, 254-267.

2021.  “Beyond the Human Horizon.” Religion and Society 12(1): 21-38.

2021.  “Non-Compassionate Care: A View from an Islamic Charity Organization.” Contemporary Islam 15 (2): 1-14.  

2021.  “God in Times of Uncertainty.” Dossier Corona – Religious Matters, https://religiousmatters.nl/god-in-times-of-uncertainty/. Co-author: Khadija Mohamed Embaby.

2020.  “The Elsewhere Beyond Religious Concerns.” Afterword for special issue “Elsewhere Affects.” Religion and Society 11(1): 176-185. Co-author: Annalisa Buttici.

2020.  “Islamic Charity as (Non)Political.” Islamic Law and Society 27(1-2): 111-131.

2017.  “The unknown in the Egyptian uprising: towards an anthropology of al-Ghayb.” Contemporary Islam, 1-15.

2017.  “Muslim Prayer on Picture Postcards of French Algeria, 1900–1960.” Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 13(1): 23-51. Co-author: William A. Christian Jr.  

2015.  “How to Do Things with Examples: Of Sufis, Dreams, and Anthropology.” Special issue on “The Power of Example,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21: 129-143.  

2014.  “Beyond Compassion: Islamic Voluntarism in Egypt.” American Ethnologist 41(3).

2014.  “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma.” Cultural Anthropology 29(1): 54-79.

2014. “Trading with God: Islam, Calculation, Excess.” In Companion to the Anthropology of Religion, edited by Michael Lambek and Janice Boddy. Wiley-Blackwell, 274-294.

2014.  “Dreams.” In Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God, edited by C. Fritzpatrick andA. Walker. ABC-CLIO, 151-153.

2012.  “Invisible Armies: Reflections on Egyptian Dreams of War.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54(2): 392-417.

2012.  “Dreams from Elsewhere: Muslim Subjectivities beyond the Trope of Self-Cultivation.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18(2):247-265.

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.

Graduate Students

• Maya El Helou
• Noha Fikry
• Alaa Moustafa Attiah
• Hannah Mayne
• Mahshid Zandi (DSR)
• Sadaf Ahmed (DSR)