Rosalind Gwynne

See Also: Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Rosalind Gwynne is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. She completed the B.A. in French and the Certificate in Middle East Studies at Portland State College (now Portland State University), and the Certificate in Arabic Language from the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS), an institute in Shimlan, Lebanon run by the British Foreign Office. Her M.A. is in Near Eastern Languages and Literature from the University of Washington. She also completed the Ph.D. at the University of Washington with concentrations in Islamic Theology and Philosophy and Arabic Literature and Philology. She first came to UT in 1981 to teach Arabic; now she teaches courses in Classical and Modern Islam and seminars on the Qur'an (Koran), Sufism (Islamic mysticism), and Islamic fundamentalism, as well as a world religions class.

Her book on Qur'anic argument, Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning in the Qur'an, was published by RoutledgeCurzon in 2004. (An earlier book manuscript analyzed Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, explained what offended Muslims and why, traced his sources, and showed that he had plagiarized at least two passages. Publishers turned the MS down, possibly because some who published works relating to Rushdie were being attacked, killed, and wounded at that time!) Gwynne's published articles include entries in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an and Blackwell's Companion to the Qur'an; an article on the a fortiori argument in Islamic legal, philological and theological reasoning; an article on the key legal term sunna (authoritative precedent) showing that Qur'anic usage refers very often not to human but to divine precedent; and the text of an invited presentation on Islam and Muslims in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, delivered at the biennial International Lawrence Durrell Conference in Alexandria, Egypt in 1996.

Her most widely read article has not yet been published: "Al-Qa'ida and al-Qur'an: The 'Tafsir' of Usamah bin Ladin" was put out on the web in draft form six days after September 11. It received responses from around the world and several offers of employment from our nation's capital. (It will be published later this year in the periodical Religion.) It marks a shift in her area of scholarship from classical to modern Islam, but her concentration on modes of argument applies equally well to both. Colleagues have told her that the article, 53 pages long, was the only "substantive" piece on bin Laden that they were able to find for some time. She is currently using the same techniques to analyze the works of bin Ladin's teacher and collaborator, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam.

Dr. Gwynne, like all Middle East specialists, was burdened with work after 9/11. For her lectures, interviews, panels, and media appearances at that time, she received two public service awards from the University of Tennessee.

Her outside interests (besides reading thrillers) include jazz, old houses, and calligraphy. She is herself a calligrapher and is trained in both Latin alphabets and Arabic scripts.

Education

• Ph.D., Islamic Theology and Philosophy and Arabic Literature and Philology, University of, Washington, Seattle, Washington, 1982
• M.A., Near Eastern Languages and Literature, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington,1970
• B.A., French; Certificate in Middle East Studies, Portland State College, 1967
• Honors Certificate in Arabic, Middle East Center for Arab Studies, Shimlan, Lebanon, 1964

Fields of Interest

• Islamic Studies
• Qur'an and its Exegesis
• Forms of Reasoning and Argument
• Use of the Qur'an by Modern Militants
• Arabic Language and Philology

Current Courses

• 10:10-11:00 MWF - 333 Islam in the Modern World (3) (#001)
• 3:40-6:20 T - 440/532 Seminar in Comparative Religion: Islamic Fundamentalism (3) (#001)

Contact Information

Rosalind Gwynne
Associate Professor
513A McClung Tower
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0450

Phone: 865-974-6988
Email: rgwynne@utk.edu