Magic and the occult surround us. Tarot cards, astrological birth charts, fantasy novels, crystals: all of these are testaments to a sustained interest in unseen and hidden powers. Like religion and like science, magic too has a history. It is largely a history of being opposed to the others—magic is religion done wrong, or magic is bad science. My work looks at one chapter in this long history of magic, delving into premodern Islamic intellectual history to discover how premodern Muslim scholars wrote and thought about the meaning of magic and its relationship to religion and science. I am trained in the discipline of Religious Studies, a field dedicated to studying the history of religions, how they change and develop over time, and the ways in which societies shape and are shaped by religion. I received my PhD from Yale in 2024, my MTS (Masters of Theological Studies) from Harvard Divinity School, and my BA from Davidson College.
