SHERMAN JACKSON

Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Department of Near Eastern Studies
4167 Thayer Academic Building - Ann Arbor, MI  48104-1608
(734) 763-4671 - fax (734) 936-2679
sajackso@umich.edu

EDUCATION
1990  Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.

1986  Master of Arts, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.

1982  Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.

EMPLOYMENT
2004 -        Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Department of Near Eastern Studies, The University of Michigan.

1997 - 2004   Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Department of Near Eastern Studies, The University of Michigan.

Fall 2006       Visiting Professor of Law, The University of Michigan Law School.

Professor of Afro-American Studies, The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, The University of Michigan.

EMPLOYMENT  EXPERIENCE
1996 -1997  Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Department of Near Eastern and Asian Studies, Wayne State University.

1996 -1997  Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University, Bloomington, (on leave, 1996-1997).

1992 -1996  Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington.

1989 -1992  Instructor to Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, The University of Texas at Austin.

1987 -1989  Executive Director of the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), The American University in Cairo, Egypt.

1985 -1987  Teaching Assistant of Arabic, The University of Pennsylvania.

1985 -1986  Escort-Interpreter, Language Service Division, United States Department of State.

1985 -1986  Instructor of Arabic, summer (nine-week intensive program taught entirely in Arabic), School of Arabic, Middlebury College.

EXTRAMURAL PROFESSIONAL WORK
2002 -     Member, Editorial Board, The Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, DePaul University, Chicago, IL.

1997- 2000  Member, Editorial Board, Quill Publications, Houston, TX.

1997 -1999  President, Sharî'ah Scholars Association of North America, Royal Oak, MI.

1994 -1999  Member, Board of Trustees, The North American Islamic Trust, Plainfield, IN, Chicago, IL.

1993  Selection Committee for the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), The School of Advance International Studies, Washington, D.C.

1993 -  Member, Publications Board, American Trust Publications, Plainfield, Indiana.

1992 -  Consultant, The Qur'an Project, a joint effort to produce a fresh American English translation of the Qur'an headed by Shaykh Ahmad Zaki Hammad, Chicago.

1992 - 1997  Member, Editorial Board, American Trust Publications, Plainfield, IN.

1991 (Oct.) -1992 (May)  Member, Austin Metropolitan Ministries, Austin, TX. The AMM consisted of representatives of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths.

1991 -  Chairman, Board of Trustees: The Islamic Teaching Center, Plainfield, IN, a subsidiary of The Islamic Society of North America and Canada (ISNA).

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Re-Fresher Program for Teachers and Scholars of Arabic (CASA III), Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt, Summer, 2001.

Rackham Graduate School Summer Institute Fellowship, The University of Michigan, notified march 2000 for summer 2000, ($7,000).

Michigan Humanities Award, The University of Michigan, a year long leave (2001-2001) at full salary to conduct research on a monograph tentatively entitled, "Towards an Islamic Legal Realism."

Summer Faculty Research Grant, Indiana University, Summer, 1994.

Summer Research Grant, Middle Eastern Studies Program, Indiana University, Summer, 1994.

Summer Faculty Research Grant, Indiana University, Summer, 1993 ($6,500.00).

Appreciation and Service Award, the Center for Arabic Study Abroad, presented at the National Conference of the Middle East Studies Association, 1992.

Stiles Professorship in Literature and the Humanities, The University of Texas at Austin, Summer, 1990.

Teaching Fellowship, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, 1985-87.

Honorable Mention Certificate in national translation contest, American Association of Teachers of Arabic, 1985.

Fontaine Fellowship, The University of Pennsylvania, 1983, 1984.

Full-Year Scholarship to Cairo, Egypt, Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), The American University in Cairo, 1982-83.

PUBLICATIONS
Books
Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihâb al-Dîn al-Qarâfî. Leiden: E.J. Brill Leiden, 1996.

The Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî's Faysal al-Tafriqa Bayna al-Islam wa al-Zandaqa, Oxford University Press, 2002.

Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward The Third Resurrection.. New York: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2005.

Islam and Black Theodicy: Classical Islamic Theology in Modern America (completed and under review).

Articles
"Literalism, Empiricism and Induction: Concretizing the Maqasid al-Shari'ah in the Modern World," Michigan State Law Review (in press).

"Legal Pluralism Between Islam and the Nation-State: Romantic Medievalism or Pragmatic Modernity?" Fordham International Law Journal, vol. 30 no. 1 (December, 2006): 158-76.

"Shari'ah, Democracy and the Modern Nation-State: Some Reflections on Islam, Popular Rule and Pluralism," Fordham International Law Journal, vol. 27 no. 1 (2004): 88-107.

"Preliminary Reflections on Islam and Black Religion," Muslims' Place in the American Public Square: Hopes, Fears and Aspirations, ed. Z. Bukhari et al. (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2004), 201-21.

"Black Orientalism: Its Genesis, Aims and Significance for American Islam," Muslims in the United States, ed. P. Strum and D. Tarantolo (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2003), 21-38.

"Islam(s) East and West: Pluralism between No-Frills and Designer Fundamentalism," September 11: A Watershed Moment?, ed. M. Dudziak (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 113-35.

"Jihad and the Modern World," The Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, vol. 7 no. 1 (2002): 1-26.

"Duty and Discipline in a Medieval Muslim Elementary School: Ibn Hajar al-Haytamî's Taqrîr al-Maqâl," Studies in Muslim Education in Honor of Professor George Makdisi ed. D. Stewart, S. Toorawa and J. Lowry (Great Britain: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004), 18-32.

"Wasil ibn Ata," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 336.

"Shariah Courts," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 288.

"Sahnun," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 273.

"Qarafi, Shihab al-Din," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 253.

"Lian," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 180.

"Ibn Jamaah, Badr al-Din Abu Abd Allah Muhammad," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 127.

"Awzai, al," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 30.

"Abd al-Jabbar, Qadi," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1.

"Fiction and Formalism: Towards a Functional Analysis of Usûl al-Fiqh," Studies in Islamic Legal Theory (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001), 177-201.

"Kramer Versus Kramer in a 10th/16th Century Egyptian Court: Post-Formative Jurisprudence between Exigency and Law," Islamic Law and Society, vol. 8, no. 1 (2001): 27-51.

"Domestic Terrorism in the Islamic Legal Tradition," The Muslim World, vol. 91, no. 3 and 4 (Fall 2001): 293-310.

"Islam, Muslims and Socio-Political Reality in The United States," American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, vol. 17, no. 3 (2000): 1-25.

"Setting the Record Straight: Ibn al-Labbâd's Refutation of al-Shâfî'i," Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 11, no. 2 (2000): 121-46.

"Islam and Affirmative Action," Journal of Law and Religion, vol. 14, no. 2 (2001): 405-31.

"Debt," The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'ân, edited by J. McAuliffe et al. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001), 514-15.

"Cheating," The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'ân, edited by J. McAuliffe et al. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001), 300-01.

"The Alchemy of Domination? Some Ash'arite Responses to Mu'tazilite Ethics," International Journal of Middle East Studies no. 31 (1999): 185-201.

"Taqlîd, Legal Scaffolding and the Scope of Legal Injunctions in Post-Formative Theory: Mutlaq and 'Amm in the Jurisprudence of Shihâb al-Dîn al-Qarâfî," Islamic Law and Society, vol. 3 no. 2 (1996).

"The Nation of Islam," Harpers Encyclopaedia of Religion (in press).

"Shihâb al-Dîn al-Karâfî," The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, edited by C.E. Bosworth et al., Leiden: E.J. Brill, (1996), vol. IX (fasc. 155-56), p. 436.

"Sâlim b. Muhammad," The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, edited by C.E. Bosworth et al., Leiden: E.J. Brill, (1995), vol. VIII (fasc. 145-46), p. 991.

"The Primacy of Domestic Politics: Ibn Bint al-A'azz and the Establishment of the Four Chief Judgeships in Mamluk Egypt," Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 115, no. 1(1995): 52-65.

"Muhtasib," Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World, John L. Esposito, Editor in chief, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), vol. 3, pp. 170-71.

"Ibn Taymîyah on Trial in Damascus," The Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. 39, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 41-85.

"From Prophetic Actions to Constitutional Theory: A Novel Chapter in Medieval Muslim Jurisprudence," International Journal of Middle East Studies 25(1993): 71-90.

"The Second Education of the Mufti: Reflections on Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi's 'Tips to the Jurisconsult'," The Muslim World 82, no. 3-4 (July-October, 1992): 201-17.

"Al-Jâhiz on Translation," Alif, Journal of Comparative Poetics 4 (Spring 1984): 99-107.

REVIEWS
Shi'i Scholars of Nineteenth Century Iraq: The Ulama of Najaf and Karbala, M. Litvak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) for The American Historical Review (June, 2001): 1100-1101.

Freedom of Expression in Islam, M.H. Kamali (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1997), in International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 31 (1999): 450-52.

The Sono-Qur'ân in The Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, vol. 29 no. 1 (July, 1995): 143-45.

Islamic Law and Jurisprudence, ed. N. Heer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies vol. 53, no. 2 (April 1994): 68-69.

LANGUAGES
Arabic (Classical); Egyptian, Levantine, Saudi Arabian and Sudanese dialects; French; German; Persian.

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