Dr Ruth Mas

Dr. Mas's research commitments emphasize the intellectual and political dimensions of contemporary Islam. She is specifically interested in the secularization of the Islamic discursive tradition and the implications for thinking about power, secularism, Muslim subjectivity and technologies of Islamic selfhood. These issues are addressed in a book project entitled, On Secular Islam; Time, Power and Tradition in Contemporary Islamic Thought.

A second book, Critique and the Crisis of Islam, investigates the relationship between secularity and criticism in current debates about the nature of critique and its relevance to the study of contemporary Islam. In analyzing the rhetorical forms to which advocates for secular critique have turned in their denunciations of "Islamic terror," the book confronts recent attempts to rethink secularity and Islam.

With these interests, Dr. Mas is now turning to the central role that emotion plays in ideology, and on the social and political mobilization of affect, emotions and sensibilities that is taking place in secular western states. Dr. Mas is thus increasingly turning to how these mobilizations are also transforming the place of emotion within the Islamic tradition.