Lecture: “Law, Ethics, and the History of the Islamic Marriage Contract” with Marion Holmes Katz, University of California Irvine, February 13, 2025 @ 8-9 PM ET

“Law, Ethics, and the History of the Islamic Marriage Contract” 
Welcoming guest lecturer Marion Holmes Katz, Professor at New York University.

Marion Holmes Katz is a Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Her work focuses on the history of Islamic legal thought, primarily in the 11^th-15^th centuries CE, with an emphasis on issues of gender and ritual. She is particularly interested in the conceptual structures of legal works and how Islamic legal thought relates to other normative discourses that were authoritative for premodern Muslims. She is also interested in the ongoing life of these texts (and of Islamic law) in modernity. Professor Katz is the author of five books, including Women in the Mosque: A History of Legal Thought and Social Practice; Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice; and The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam, as well as many academic articles. Her most recent book, Wives and Work: Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity (2022), uses the disputed status of wives’ domestic labor as a window into deeper debates about the structure of the Muslim marriage contract and the nature of the rights and obligations that were exchanged between the spouses. Professor Katz holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago and a BA from Yale University.

Advanced registration is required to attend this event.

For registration and further details, see here.