We are pleased to announce that Dr. Joseph Hill has been appointed to the position of Assistant Professor in our department.
From the Yale website: http://www.yale.edu/anthropology/anthropology/Dept_news/Entries/2011/11/7_Yale_Ph.D._alum_Joseph_Hill_appointed_Assistant_Professor_at_the_University_of_Alberta.html
Since 2001 Hill has been researching the uses of religious knowledge and authority in a global Sufi Islamic movement, the Faydah Tijaniyyah. Drawing on fieldwork primarily in Senegal and Mauritania, his research examines how people use paradoxical and apparently contradictory mystical discourses to accommodate mutually irreducible points of view and practical demands. He is currently writing a book and several articles looking at a growing number of women Islamic leaders in Senegal, who redefine religious authority as a naturally feminine attribute through presenting motherhood, cooking, interiority, and wifely devotion as aspects of religious authority. Over the past four years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo, he has extended his research to include the movement's young elites who come to Cairo to continue their religious education. Additionally, since the beginning of Egypt's popular uprising, he has also regularly attended protests and political meetings, observing the ongoing struggles between protesters and the regime.
Hill is presently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology & Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.