Alexander Orwin

Undergraduate institution: University of Toronto, Major in Classics, minor in South Asian Studies and Political Theory

Intellectual interests: History of political philosophy, Islamic thought, languages and politics, self-understanding (at least we should all try).

Dissertation: Alfarabi and the Question of the Islamic Ummah. This project involves investigating Alfarabi’s redefinition of this key Islamic concept, and showing how it brings out the tension between Islam’s universal Ummah of believers and the particularity of the several ethnic Ummahs (Arabs, Persians, Turks etc.) that compose it. I will also examine efforts by contemporary Muslim to resolve this same tension.

Dissertation Committee: Nathan Tarcov, Ralph Lerner, James T. Robinson.