about me

I’m a scholar of religion, race and racialization, and history. I mostly write about Muslims, often but not always located in South Asia, and imperialism. I’m currently working on Imperial Pandemics, an academic monograph that thinks about religion and race as global phenomena. I am also hard at work on Religion Isn’t Done with You (under contract, Beacon Press) with Dr. Megan Goodwin, which is a book for a general audience that draws on our popular, grant-funded podcast, Keeping It 101: a Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion.

I am associate professor of Religion and director of the Humanities Center at the University of Vermont, where I have taught since 2012. I have been recognized as an award-winning teacher whose courses are about the history of religion, Islamic practice and history, race and imperialism, and South Asian traditions.

I earned my PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in religious studies, with a specialization in Islamic studies; a Master’s of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School; and a BA from Colgate University in Religion and Asian Studies.

I serve on a number of editorial, steering, and leadership boards and was co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Study of Islam unit (2017-2021). I was the Islam section editor of Religion Compass (2016-2022). In 2022-2023, I was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awardee, and I will be completing the work on Imperial Pandemics at the University of Birmingham, UK.

I grew up playing all the sports and reading all the books and arguing all the time in New Jersey—and if you ever listen to my podcast or public talks, you’ll surely hear the accent (and the cursing; sorry, Ma). In my spare time, I raise two feisty kids, watch too much TV, read too many romance novels, and enjoy every single carbohydrate I’ve ever met.