Luce Foundation Awards Grant to Support Professorship in Islam
Hartford Seminary has received a $232,500 four-year grant from the Henry Luce Foundation for a professorship in contemporary Islam that will augment the Seminary’s program in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations.
The grant will support a new faculty member at Hartford Seminary. Timur Yuskaev starts July 1 as Assistant Professor of Contemporary Islam and Director of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program. He also will help lead a new program to educate imams.
Heidi Hadsell, president of the Seminary, said, “Hartford Seminary is deeply appreciative of this grant. Timur will bring an understanding of Islam in the American context, which is an important addition to the expertise of our faculty. His background in interfaith work and community outreach will serve him well as he starts this new position.”
Yuskaev has been an instructor and teaching assistant at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Colorado at Boulder as well as an adjunct faculty at St. Francis College, New York City.
He has a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, an M.A. from the University of Colorado and a B.A. from Bard College.
Yuskaev’s areas of specialization include Qur'anic Studies, Anthropology of the Qur'an, Qur'anic Hermeneutics, Islamic homiletics, Muslim Modernities, Islam in North America, and American and African-American religious history. His teaching experience includes courses on the Qur’an, Islamic History, Western Religious Traditions, World Religions, and African-American Religions.
“My first priority,” he said, “will be to serve my students, to prepare them to be effective leaders in the increasingly diverse religious and public landscape. Thankfully, my research interests correspond with their practical concerns. Like them, I am interested in contemporary religious discourses. I study how religious leaders communicate within and across communities. My particular emphasis will be on contributing to Hartford’s impressive record of working with Muslim congregations and organizations, in the local area and beyond.”
Hartford Seminary’s Islamic Chaplaincy Program is the only accredited Islamic Chaplaincy program in the country. It provides Muslims with the skills and knowledge needed to work as chaplains in American society.
The Seminary, in cooperation with the International Institute of Islamic Thought and its Fairfax Institute in Herndon, VA, has begun a pilot Graduate Certificate in Imam Education. This will prepare Muslim religious leaders for service in mosques and community agencies throughout the Greater Washington, D.C. area.
