Dr. Rory Dickson

Title: Associate Professor, Religion and Culture
Phone: 204-786-9202
Office: 3C38
Email: w.dickson@uwinnipeg.ca

Biography:

Dr. Dickson completed a Joint-PhD in Religious Studies (2012) at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo, with a specialization in Islamic Studies. As a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow (2010-2011) Dickson attended the University of Toronto and the University of Copenhagen’s Graduate Research School in Damascus, Syria. His research focuses on contemporary Islam in general, and on Islamic mysticism (Sufism) in particular. His forthcoming book Living Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transformation(State University of New York Press, 2015) explores the ways in which Sufi leaders in North America negotiate Sufism’s changing relation to Islamic orthodoxy, authority, and gender. He is currently preparing a manuscript with Meena Sharify-Funk (under contract with Equinox) for an innovative introductory text on Sufism, while continuing a number of research projects on Sufism.

Publications:

Books:

Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transformation. Albany: State University of New York Press (October 2015). 

Unveiling Sufism: From Manhattan to Mecca. Co-authored with Meena Sharify-Funk. Sheffield: Equinox (Under Contract).

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters:

(2015). “Negotiating the Sacred in Philadelphia: Competing Sufisms at the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Shrine.” Co-authored with Merin Shobhana Xavier. Social Compass(forthcoming).

(2014). “An American Sufism: The Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order as a Public Religion.” Studies in Religion 43(3): 411-424.

(2014). “Traces of Panentheism in Islam: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Kaleidoscope of Being.” InPanentheism Across the World’s Religious Traditions.  Co-authored with Meena Sharify-Funk.  Edited by Loriliai Biernacki and Philip Clayton, 142-160. New York: Oxford University Press.

(2013). “Islam.” In World Religions: Canadian Perspectives - Western Traditions. Co-authored with Meena Sharify-Funk. Edited by Doris B. Jakobsh, 150-200. Toronto: Nelson.

(2010). “Religion as Phantasmagoria: Islam in Sam Harris’s The End of Faith.” In Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal. Edited by Amarnath Amarasingam, 37-54. Leiden: Brill.

(2009). “The Tablighi Jama‘at in Southwestern Ontario: Making Muslim Identities and Communities in Canadian Urban Spaces.” Journal of Contemporary Islam 2(3): 99-112.

(2008). “A Contest of Grammar: Religion and Knowledge in the Thought of Ibn ‘Arabi and Ibn Taymiyyah.” ARC: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill 36: 35-51