The Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School ("PIL") is pleased to welcome Maggie Sager as its new Managing Editor, as we soon bid adieu to our outgoing editor, Cem Tecimer (SJD '24)—who shepherded our suite of publications to new heights and helped amplify and distribute the research of over two dozen scholars to the world!
The Managing Editor oversees our six publications, working closely with editor-in-chief Intisar Rabb, which range from new fora for scholars to gather primary sources and write about them in short form—namely, the SHARIAsource Portal and the Islamic Law Blog, to more traditional fora for sharing research in long-form papers and books (albeit with upgraded means of delivery and engagement online). Our research fora include the Journal of Islamic Law and its online forum, an occasional paper series—and the Harvard Series in Islamic Law (published in conjunction with Harvard University Press).
Last year, the editorial team worked closely with one another and with leading and upcoming scholars of Islamic law and history to expand the field and conversations around both cutting-edge issues and novel histories of Islamic law. We
* What would you like to accomplish during your tenure as Managing Editor?
Over the past few years, PIL has established itself as a hub for discussions and tools related to digital humanities, data science, and AI, in addition to traditional scholarship. In light of the upcoming debut of the new site platform and the release of the Courts & Canons tool suite (CnC), I have the honor of beginning my tenure as Managing Editor at an exciting time of growth and transition. I look forward to bringing innovation to the role of Managing Editor apace with these pioneering initiatives, which hold great promise for both PIL and the academic field of Islamic Law more broadly.
* What PIL resources have you drawn on for your research?
I regularly draw from PIL's publications, events, and resources in my research and teaching. I utilize the roundups to keep up to date on news and scholarship, read the Islamic Law Blog to get real-time snapshots of academic conversations, and cite the Journal of Islamic Law in my writing and syllabi.
In terms of specific publications, two stand out for me: Marion Katz's essay, "The Neglected History of Furū' and the Premodern/Modern Binary," and Ahmed El Shamsy's presentation on legal commentary for PIL's Roundtable on Islamic Legal Genres. These two pieces directly inspired my dissertation.
With respect to my research process itself, the most valuable resource has undoubtedly been PIL's Field Guide to Islamic Law Online—a tool that has been integral to many of my projects and one I find myself constantly returning to and promoting among my colleagues and students.
* Can you tell us a little bit about your academic background?
I'm originally from California and completed my BA at UC Berkeley in Middle Eastern Studies, where I developed an interest in the legal regulation of homosexuality. My master's thesis at the University of Toronto explored the early modern antecedents of contemporary criminal law in Jordan and Lebanon.
The continued relevance of Islamic and premodern law to my research questions compelled me to stretch further back in time for my PhD studies. I'm now a PhD candidate in Joint History and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies at NYU, where I work on the history of gender, sexuality, and Islamic law.
My dissertation draws from commentaries on al-Nawawī's (d. 676/1277) Minhāj al-Ṭālibīn, Rawḍat al-Ṭālibīn, and al-Majmūʿ to analyze how jurists of the post-classical Shāfiʿī madhhab conceptualized sexual and romantic relationships between women from the 13th to 19th centuries. Utilizing the genre of legal commentary has allowed me to correct two persistent assumptions in the secondary literature: 1) the sources are silent on women-loving-women (WLW) relationships, and 2) commentary was not a site for legal development. My research demonstrates that there is in fact an abundance of material on WLW relationships (often in surprising places), and that juristic discussions of such relationships and the women who pursued them led to substantive legal change across centuries.
* What are your current research interests? How did you first get interested in this research?
Over the past year, I have started integrating digital humanities methods into my work, in line with larger trends in the field. I've experimented with named entity recognition, digital corpus building, network analysis and visualization, and semantic search strategies—building on the work of openITI's KITAB Project, the NYU CAMeL Lab, and other open-source projects and practitioners. The results have been incredibly fruitful: I've uncovered references to WLW relationships that have so far gone unnoticed, even in well-known primary sources, and been able to trace and depict change over time in ways that would simply not be possible without computational approaches. I was inspired to undertake this work by PIL's partnership with and promotion of openITI!
* Any overall principle or saying that you draw on for inspiration or drive?
Fiat Lux.
* What do you like to do when you aren't working?
I love spending time with my partner and our three cats (William, Wally, and Eloise), mechanical drafting, and reading non-fiction.
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