This study explores significant aspects of the history of Islamic higher education in the central Ottoman lands (Bilad al-Rum) and Greater Syria (Bilad al-Sham) during the approximate period 1530-1650. Two general themes constitute the greatest part of our focus. The first is an examination of the divergent approaches to pedagogy in each…

Muslim students have a host of challenges and hurdles to overcome on colleges campuses today, particularly in light of the socio-political circumstances. With the rise in Islamophobia and hate crimes, coupled with day-to-day obstacles that minority students face in institutions of higher education, there is a noticeable gap in the services that…

Muslim women are portrayed with a dichotomous image: on one side, as the victims of the patriarchal Muslim men and, on the other, as the violent associates of the Muslim terrorist (Maruoka, 2008). The act of head covering, the most visible Muslim-identified marker, has thus assumed an outsized space in research of Muslim women. However, while…

The study examines formulaic politeness expressions used in Jordanian Arabic by looking into two salient features that characterize this set of idioms: figuration and traces of religious texts. One main goal is to explore the conceptual metaphors that are represented in these idioms and show their coherence and consistency with cultural values.…

The spread of Islamophobia in the U.S. positioned Muslims as different and inferior to American society and racialized their experiences by subjecting them to narratives of prejudices and stereotypes. This postcolonial interview study examined how Muslim American high school students conceptualized and negotiated their racialized identities within…

Although there are a significant number of Saudi females pursuing graduate degrees in Saudi Arabia and abroad, few studies have examined their educational experiences. This qualitative multi-case study examines the educational experiences of ten Saudi females who graduated with a master's degree in an English language related field in two…

This dissertation examines the use and linguistic behavior of the "al-raqs ala ru'oos al-tha'abeen" "dancing on the heads of snakes" metaphor and metaphors about unity in pro-government and anti-government discourse in Yemen. It adopts an intertextual, discourse-based approach that, following Oakley and Coulson (2008),…

This dissertation manuscript reports on a study that explored the ways in which the focal children in three Muslim immigrant families enacted identity by way of literacy practice. This study set out to construct a better understanding of Muslim American immigrant families by providing a "thick description" of their identity performance…

This dissertation employs data collected from multiple sites in Southern California over a period of nine months. Several in-depth ethnographic interviews and participant observations were conducted with Pakistani Muslim women (age 17-22) and their parents in an effort to better understand the influence that parents and ethno-religious communities…