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The Department of Religious Studies welcomes to its faculty Timothy Gianotti, who will round out the talented group of religious historians, philosophers, and translators with his expertise in classical Islam.
Formerly an assistant professor of religious studies and history at Pennsylvania State University, Gianotti will begin his teaching at the University of Oregon this fall. His first courses, “Introduction to Islam” and “Islamic Mystical Thought,” are expected to generate wide student interest. Andrew Goble, head of the Department of Religious Studies, says that Gianotti is an exciting addition to their faculty.
Educated at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Toronto, Gianotti’s studies also included several periods of residence in the West Bank and Jordan. On a Fulbright scholarship, Gianotti studied literary Arabic at the University of Jordan, where he returned on a second grant to conduct further research. His first book, published in 2001, is on the medieval thinker al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul. A second book, Walking the Way of the Afterlife, will also focus on the ideas of al-Ghazali, who is, according to Gianotti, one of the most influential scholars of Islam’s 1,400-year history.
In addition to Arabic, Gianotti is also fluent in French and Cantonese and proficient in Medieval Latin and Ancient Greek. This classical religious scholar is eager to explore the many connections he sees emerging between his own interests and those of his new colleagues, he says.
With additional academic interests in geography, philosophy, history, Judaic studies, and medieval studies, Gianotti says the “sense of scholarly community” is what drew him to the UO. “There is clear evidence of a lively interdisciplinary conversation on campus,” he says, “and I feel privileged to be joining that conversation.”
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