Gheorghe Pacurar and Maidah Khalid were awarded College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowships which are intended to help students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences complete their doctoral degrees.
Mr. Pacurar’s dissertation, “Incarnate Ecclesiology and the Making of Democratic Law in Interwar Romania,” marshals archival materials to reframe Orthodox ecclesiology’s contributions to nascent democratic movements in early-twentieth-century Romania. It is a sophisticated study that challenges—and dispels—closely held pieties surrounding religion and law in Eastern Europe, especially in Orthodox contexts.
Ms. Khalid’s dissertation, “Categorical Assemblages (and Disruptions) in the Passage of Islamic Law: An Analysis of the al-Hidayah by al-Marghinani,” challenges the very assumptions of how people were defined under medieval Islamic law. Tracing the intersectionality of these social categories sheds new light on Muslim theological anthropology that has been misused by colonial powers, encouraging us to reevaluate the legal and political structures they have erected.
The College of Arts