Jump the navigation
Lauren Osborne

Lauren Osborne

Associate Professor of Religion, Chair

My current research is on the recitation of the Qur'an and the possibilities for understanding meaning across the sound and experience of the text. In this research, I employ both hermeneutic and ethnographic methods, drawing on my background in religious studies and music. In both my research and my teaching, I am also interested in non-discursive meaning in religious texts and experience, mysticism (particularly its literary aesthetics), Jews and Muslims in medieval Andalusia, and music and religion.

  • Religion 110 Religion & the Senses
  • Religion 170 The End Times: Representations of the Apocalypse
  • Religion 203 What Is Religion?
  • Religion 205 American Islam
  • Religion 207 Islamic Traditions
  • Religion 217 The Qur'an
  • Religion 236 Comparative Scriptures
  • Religion 304 Muslim Bodies
  • Religion/Film and Media Studies 307 Mediating Religions
  • Religion/Music 310 Hearing Islam
  • Religion 321 Islamic Mysticism
  • Religion 448 Seminar in the Academic Study of Religion

2025, Hearing Islam: The Sounds of a Global Religious Tradition. New York: Routledge.

2024, “Breath, bodies, and sacred text: Thinking about recitation with al-Ghazālī and Kūkai,” a dialogue collaboratively published with Charlotte Eubanks. postmedieval 15, issue 2 (June 2024): 373–389. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-024-00314-5

2021, “The Relationship of the Oral and the Written,” The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an, edited by Daniel Madigan, Maria Massi Dakake, and George Archer. New York: Routledge

2021, "Breath," Annual Whitman College Convocation Address

2020, "The Mediated Qur’an: Religious Education and Recitation via Online Distance Learning in the Sultanate of Oman," Yale Journal of Music and Religion 6, no. 2: 74-88. https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr/vol6/iss2/5/

2019 "Aural Epistemology: Hearing and Listening in the Text of the Qur'an" and volume introduction, "The Qur'an and Affect," Body and Religion 3, number 1, (2019): 71-93. https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.16810

2019 "Feeling the Words: Sayyid Qutb's Affective Engagement with the Qurʾan in Al-Taswir al-Fanni fi al-Qurʾan," Religion Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12338

2019 Edited work, Syndicate Symposium on Karen Bauer's Gender Hierarchy in the Qur'an. Syndicate Network. https://syndicate.network/symposia/theology/gender-hierarchy-in-the-quran/

2016 "Textual and Paratextual Meaning in the Recited Qur'an: Analysis of a Performance of Surat al-Furqan by Sheikh Mishary bin Rashid al-Afasy." Qur'anic Studies Today, edited by Angelika Neuwirth and Michael Sells. New York: Routledge, 2016. https://www.routledge.com/Quranic-Studies-Today/Neuwirth-Sells/p/book/9781138181953

2016 "The Experience of the Recited Qur'an." Invited contribution for " Bringing Sound into Middle East Studies," a roundtable organized by Carole Woodall and Andrea Stanton. International Journal of Middle East Studies48, issue 01 (February 2016): 124-128. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S002074381500152X

beaker duck hiker icon-a-to-z icon-arrow-circle-down icon-arrow-circle-up icon-arrow-down icon-arrow-left icon-arrow-right icon-arrow-up icon-calendar-no-circle icon-calendar icon-camera icon-clock icon-cv icon-dot icon-down-triangle icon-email-circle icon-email icon-external-link icon-facebook icon-flickr icon-generic-blog icon-google-plus icon-home icon-instagram icon-library icon-link-circle icon-link-inverted icon-linkedin icon-lock icon-magazine icon-map-pin icon-map2 icon-menu-hamburger icon-menu-mobile-a icon-menu-mobile-b icon-menu-x icon-mywhitman-cog icon-news icon-phone icon-pinterest icon-play icon-quote icon-search-a icon-search-b icon-search-mobile-a icon-search-mobile-b icon-share icon-snail-mail icon-tumblr icon-twitter icon-vimeo icon-youtube logo-whitman-nc-flat logo-whitman-nc-stacked logo-whitman-no-clocktower slider-category-arrow-2px slider-category-arrow-no-line slider-category-arrow-solid slider-category-arrow slider-category-line-2px slider-category-line-solid slider-category-line tc_icon-filmstrip-fl tc_icon-filmstrip-ln tc_icon-play-fl-closed tc_icon-play-fl-open tc_icon-play-ln-closed tc_icon-play-ln-open wifi