Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International Studies

The Roberta Buffett Visiting Professorship in International Studies, created through a gift from Roberta “Bertie” Buffett Elliott, brings to campus leading scholars from around the world to build international scholarly relationships and to provide educational opportunities for Northwestern students.

Scott Reese is associate professor of history at Northern Arizona University. He has a PhD in African and Islamic History (University of Pennsylvania, 1996) and an MA in African Studies from Ohio University (1990). A historian of Islam in Africa and the western Indian Ocean, Reese focuses specifically on comparative history aimed at breaking down many of the regional and geographic categories currently in use across the academy. His main research interests are comparative Sufism, modern Muslim discourses of reform, and the construction of world systems both in fact and imagination since 1500. He currently explores the role of Muslim religious discourse in mediating the social consequences of empire. Focusing on the British Settlement of Aden, located in present-day Yemen, this new project explores how Muslims from across Britain’s empire use the commonality of their faith to fashion a new community within the spaces created by imperial rule. Reese has published a number of scholarly articles and books, including Renewers of the Age: Holy Men and Social Discourse in Colonial Benaadir (Brill, 2008). He is also working to complete a monograph, tentatively titled Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the Imperial Indian Ocean 1839-1937.

While at Northwestern, Reese will be teaching two upper division undergraduate seminars in the Department of Religious Studies, REL 353 (Revolution and Reform in Islam) and REL 359 (Islam in the Indian Ocean).

Reese will deliver the lecture ‘A Leading Muslim of Aden’: Personal Trajectories, Imperial Networks, and the Construction of Community in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire on Monday, May 21, at 5pm in Harris Hall, Room 108, 1881 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, Illinois.