Dr. Mahdi Tourage

Areas of Specialization

Islamic Religious Thought and Mysticism (Sufism), Classical Persian Literature, Gender and Sexuality

Areas of Competence and Teaching Interest

Islam:                                 Sufism, Religious Thought, Women and Gender
Comparative Religion: Pre-Modern Mysticism
Contemporary:              Theory and Methods in the Study of Religion, Middle Eastern Cultures, Continental Philosophy
                                   (Lacan, Derrida, Irigaray, Butler)

Research Interests:

My current research interest lies in examining the possibility of a typology of comparative mystical experiences by investigating the
similarities/differences in expressions of mystical experiences in pre-modern Sufi texts. I am mostly interested in the following
questions: What cultural assumptions and epistemological underpinnings give rise to similar if not identical concepts (like the
Creative Feminine or the Perfect Man) in various mystical texts? Is a concept like the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) a name or a
description of an ontological structure? Are mystical texts records of mystical experiences or reports of them, or are they themselves
the very mystical experiences they explain? What do these similarities mean for a comparative phenomenology of mysticism? Is
“phallocentricism” merely a theoretically driven label loosely applied to a few textual similarities explaining certain mystical
experiences that are interpreted in the Mathnawī and the Zohar? Finally, Can we meaningfully speak of a typology of comparative
mystical experiences?

I am also working on a larger project exploring the relationship between Islam and postmodernism, how Islam has been interpreted in
a post-modern age? What is postmodern--or even modern for that matter--anyways? What are the perils and promises of this
relationship? What can Islam, and especially Sufism teach Postmoderns and what new insights can postmodern theories offer
Muslims? In what ways postmodernism is modified, corrected, or augmented by Islamic discourse? Why is there so much resistance
to postmodernism by Muslims/scholars who are so (post)modern themselves?

Languages

Native fluency in Persian and English, strong command of Arabic, reading knowledge of French, German