Institutional Affiliation
Colorado College
Department of Religion
Education
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Regional and Thematic Interests
West Asia/Middle East
Religion
Profile
After practicing law first as a sole practitioner from 1991 to 1995 and then as a partner at Cirilano & Wright from 1995 to 2001, Professor Wright received his PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the Colorado College Religion Department, where he served as the Faculty Advisor for Arabic and Islamic Studies in 2013. His research interests include the Qu'ran; Hermeneutics (pre-modern and modern, Muslim and non-Muslim); Islamic history and civilization; intertextual relations between Muslim, Biblical and para-biblical traditions; Hadith and prophetic biography; Islamic law and legal theory; and Islam in the Americas.
Selected Publications
2013. Book Chapter: “Islam: Submission to God” in Leslie Stevenson, David L. Haberman, and Peter Matthews Wright, Twelve Theories of Human Nature, 6th edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 137-153 (peer-reviewed).
2011. Book Chapter: “The Qur’anic David” in Constructs of Prophecy in the Former and Latter Prophets and in Other Texts (Ancient Near Eastern Monographs/Monografias sobre el Antiguo Cercano Oriente), edited by Lester L. Grabbe and Martii Nissinen, Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press, pp. 187-196 (peer-reviewed).
2011. Review of The Qur’an and its Biblical Subtext by Gabriel Said Reynolds, New York: Routledge (2010) in Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer), pp. 219-223.
2010. Peer-Reviewed Journal Article: “Critical Approaches to the ‘Farewell Khutba’ in Ibn Ishaq’s Life of the Prophet” in Comparative Islamic Studies 6.1-2, pp. 215-248.
2010. Peer-Reviewed Journal Article: “After Smith: Romancing the Text When ‘Maps Are All We Possess’” in Religion and Literature 42.3 (Notre Dame: Autumn), pp. 93-122.
2010. Review Essay: “From Politics to Metapolitics: Norman O. Brown’s The Challenge of Islam” in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media & Culture 32.3 (Wayne State University Press: Fall), pp. 338-347.
2010. Encyclopedia Article: “Qur’an,” The Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History, New York: Facts on File, May (peer-reviewed).
2007. “Auf dem Spiel steht nichts geringeres als die Freiheit” (“At Risk Is Nothing Less Than Freedom”), published by the German on-line journal Sicherheit-Heute (Security Today), http://www.sicherheit-heute.de/forum (Reflections on remarks made by Professor Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd in the same publication), April.