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College of Humanities People

Georges Tamer, Professor, M.S. Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies

Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures: http://nelc.osu.edu/



Education:
Magister in Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin, 1995; Ph.D., in Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin, 2000; Habilitation in Islamic Studies, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 2007.

Dr. Tamer’s research deals with various subjects of Arabic and Islamic literature and culture. His particular interests are the Koran and the Arabic literature in the context of Late Antiquity, classical Arabic poetry, medieval Arabic Philosophy as well as its reception in modern political philosophy. His other areas of expertise include Islamic thought and Christian- and Judeo-Arabic literature. Before coming to OSU, Dr. Tamer taught at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

In addition to numerous articles and book contributions he is the author of Islamische Philosophie und die Krise der Moderne: Das Verhältnis von Leo Strauss zu Alfarabi, Avicenna und Averroes (Islamic Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: The Relationship of Leo Strauss to Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes), 2001, and the editor of The Trias of Maimonides. Jewish, Arabic and Ancient Culture of Knowledge, 2005, and Humor in Arabic Culture, 2009. He translated into Arabic an anthology by Jürgen Habermas: al-Hadâtha wa Khitâbuha s-Siyasi (Modernity and its Political Discourse), 2001, and Târîkh al-Qur’ân, Theodor Nöldeke’s Geschichte des Qorans, 2004, with Introduction, Explanations and Register. His book Zeit und Gott. Hellenistische Zeitvorstellungen in der altarabischen Dichtung und im Koran (Time and God. Hellenistic Concepts of Time in pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry and in the Koran) has been published 2008. In 2010 he co-edited Kritische Religionsphilosophie. He is currently co-editing a book on Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya.

Dr. Tamer was 2002-2003 Fellow of the Working Group Modernity and Islam at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and 2006 Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His next research project will be a book on the concept of time in the Koran. He has received several Grants for Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities at OSU. Most recently, he has been awarded the prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship of the German Gerda Henkel Foundation for two years (2012-2013).

Prof. Tamer organized three international and interdisciplinary conferences: "The Trias of Maimonides" (Erlangen, 2004), "Humor in Arabic Culture" (Berlin, 2007) and "Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazali" (Columbus, 2011), and co-organized "Migration, Religion, and Germany" (Columbus, 2011).

View a PDF of Tarikh al-Qur'an [PDF]