Amira Mittermaier

Amira Mittermaier is Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of Anthropology. Grounded in long-term fieldwork, her work offers an ethnographic window into how Islam is practiced, debated, and (re)imagined close to the ground. She has written several books on Islam in present-day Egypt: Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (California, 2010), Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times (California, 2019), and Ninety-Nine: A Kaleidoscopic Portrait of Allah (Duke, 20216). Her work on God-imaginaries was supported by a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship and has recently extended into a collaborative project on lived Islamic theologies in Gaza since 2023.

From 2025-2027, Mittermaier is serving as President of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, and in June 2026 she is taking on the role of Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies. 
 

Education

Ph.D. (2006, Columbia University)

Courses

• Anthropology of Religion
• Living Islam
• Anthropology of the Middle East
• Craft of Social/Cultural Anthropology
• Reading Ethnography

Major Awards and Grants

2021.  Guggenheim Fellowship, John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation  

2014.  Named to Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists

2012-13.  Chancellor Jackman Research Fellowship,  Jackman Humanities Institute Fellowship, University of Toronto

2011.  Winner of the Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, awarded by Society for the Anthropology of Religion, for Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011)

2011.  Winner of Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, second place, awarded by Society for Humanistic Anthropology, for Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011)

2011.  Winner of Award for Excellence in the Analytical-Descriptive Studies category, awarded by American Academy of Religion, for Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011)

2011.  Winner of Chicago Folklore Prize, awarded jointly by the American Folklore Society and the University of Chicago, for for Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011)

Publications

Books

2026.   Ninety-Nine: A Kaleidoscopic Portrait of Allah. Duke University Press. 

2019.  Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

2011.  Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Articles and Chapters

2025     “Toward an Ethnography of God.” American Anthropologist 127(3): 541-551.
 
2025    “The Uneven Landscapes of Censorship.” Public Anthropologist 7(2): 202-226.

2025.  "Religious Afterlives of a Revolution." Cultural Anthropology 40(1)

2025 “Introduction.” Special Section “Divine Human Relations after the Arab Spring.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (CSSAAME), co-author: Joud Alkorani, pp. 83-90.

2025 “God, Islam, and Anthropology.” In Conceptualizing Islam: Current Approaches, edited by Paula Schrode, Frank Peter, and Ricarda Stegman. Routledge, 233-246.

2024 “The Gift of Food: An Islamic Ethics of Care.” In Care in a Time of Humanitarianism: Stories of Refuge, Aid, and Repair in the Global South, edited by Arzoo Osanloo and Cabeiri Robinson. Berghahn, 254-267.

2021.  “Beyond the Human Horizon.” Religion and Society 12(1): 21-38.

2021.  “Non-Compassionate Care: A View from an Islamic Charity Organization.” Contemporary Islam 15 (2): 1-14.  

2021.  “God in Times of Uncertainty.” Dossier Corona – Religious Matters, https://religiousmatters.nl/god-in-times-of-uncertainty/. Co-author: Khadija Mohamed Embaby.

2020.  “The Elsewhere Beyond Religious Concerns.” Afterword for special issue “Elsewhere Affects.” Religion and Society 11(1): 176-185. Co-author: Annalisa Buttici.

2020.  “Islamic Charity as (Non)Political.” Islamic Law and Society 27(1-2): 111-131.

2017.  “The unknown in the Egyptian uprising: towards an anthropology of al-Ghayb.” Contemporary Islam, 1-15.

2017.  “Muslim Prayer on Picture Postcards of French Algeria, 1900–1960.” Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 13(1): 23-51. Co-author: William A. Christian Jr.  

2015.  “How to Do Things with Examples: Of Sufis, Dreams, and Anthropology.” Special issue on “The Power of Example,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21: 129-143.  

2014.  “Beyond Compassion: Islamic Voluntarism in Egypt.” American Ethnologist 41(3).

2014.  “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma.” Cultural Anthropology 29(1): 54-79.

2014. “Trading with God: Islam, Calculation, Excess.” In Companion to the Anthropology of Religion, edited by Michael Lambek and Janice Boddy. Wiley-Blackwell, 274-294.

2014.  “Dreams.” In Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God, edited by C. Fritzpatrick andA. Walker. ABC-CLIO, 151-153.

2012.  “Invisible Armies: Reflections on Egyptian Dreams of War.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54(2): 392-417.

2012.  “Dreams from Elsewhere: Muslim Subjectivities beyond the Trope of Self-Cultivation.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18(2):247-265.

2010.  “A Matter of Interpretation: Dreams, Islam, and Psychology in Contemporary Egypt.” In After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement, edited by Courtney Bender and Pamela Klassen. New York: Columbia University Press, 178-200.

2008.  “(Re)Imagining Space: Dreams and Saint Shrines in Egypt.” In Dimensions of Locality: Muslim Saints, their Place and Space (Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam 2008), edited by Georg Stauth and Samuli Schielke. Bielefeld: Transcript, 47-66.

2007.  “The Book of Visions: Dreams, Poetry, and Prophecy in Contemporary Egypt.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39 (2): 229-47.

Graduate Students

• Noha Fikry
• Alaa Moustafa Attiah
• Mahshid Zandi (DSR)
• Hamza Khan (Political Science)