Muntazir Ali

Head of Islamic Studies, Professional Track Faculty

Liberal and Professional Studies

Email Address: m_ali5@uncg.edu

Education

PhD in Religious Studies, Brown University

MSt. in Modern South Asian Studies, Oxford

Post-graduate diploma in Islamic Studies and Humanities, Institute of Ismaili Studies London

About

Muntazir’s dissertation titled “To Samarkand, Delhi, and Back to the Mountains: Space, Place, and Belonging in “greater Badakhshan,” ca. 1750-1969,” is a study of ideas about space, place, and religio-political identities in Chitral, a node in the historical “greater Badakhshan” region and a mountainous district in today’s north-western Pakistan, between ca. 1750 and 1969 C.E. It investigates the spatial logic at the core of indigenous, national, and imperial/colonial conceptions of space and representations of the region, their specific configurations, and mutual conversations at distinct points in the history of the region. At the heart of the project is an attempt to imagine alternative forms of sovereignty and belonging, that both destabilize and overflow the imperial and national forms, substantiated through close attention to historical and contemporary representations from and about the region.