Islamic and Comparative Religious Studies: Selected Writings

About William A. Graham

W. A. Graham has been a member of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 1973 and was appointed dean of Harvard Divinity School in 2002. He is a past director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and past chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations the Committee on the Study of Religion the Committee on Middle Eastern Studies and the Core Curriculum Subcommittee on Foreign Cultures at Harvard. From 1991-2003 he was Master of Currier House one of Harvard's twelve residential colleges. He is also former chair of the Council on Graduate Studies in Religion (U.S. and Canada). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His scholarly work has focused on early Islamic religious history and textual traditions and problems in the history of world religion. In October 2000 he received the quinquennial Award for Excellence in Research in Islamic History and Culture from the Research Centre for Islamic History Art and Culture the research institute of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. He has held John Simon Guggenheim and Alexander von Humboldt research fellowships and is the author of Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam (1977; American Council of Learned Societies History of Religions Prize 1978) Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (1987 1993) and numerous articles and reviews; co-author of The Heritage of World Civilizations (8th rev. ed. 2008) and Three Faiths One God (2003); co-editor of Islamfiche: Readings from Islamic Primary Sources (1982-87). He received his A.B summa cum laude from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard.