Professor Souad T. Ali is head of Classics and Middle Eastern studies, founding chair of the Arizona State University Council for Arabic and Islamic Studies; coordinator of Arabic Studies; associate professor of Arabic literature and Middle Eastern/Islamic studies in the School of International Letters and Cultures (SILC). She is simultaneously an affiliate graduate faculty member in English, women and gender studies, religious studies, and justice and social inquiry; as well as an affiliate faculty member in the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, African and African-American studies, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Institute for Humanities Research, and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. A scholar with international recognition, Professor Ali is a recipient of several awards including, the ASU Faculty Women's Association Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award (2017); the ASU Outstanding Advisor of the Year (2019), among others. A Fulbright Scholar, Professor Ali is the author of A Religion, Not A State: Ali 'Abd al-Raziq's Islamic Justification of Political Secularism (University of Utah Press 2009), The Road to Two Sudans, an edited volume of which she is the lead editor, has been published internationally by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2014). Ali's third book is Perspectives of Five Kuwaiti Women in Leadership Roles: Feminism, Islam and Politics (CSP, 2019). Professor Ali's impressive scholarship also includes over 30 scholarly articles in several languages, and more than 100 scholarly conference presentations. With degrees from prestigious institutions such as the University of Utah and Brigham Young University, as well as the University of Khartoum and the Polytechnic of North London, Professor Ali brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her work. She has held several key leadership roles, including serving as the past president of the American Academy of Religion/Western Region (AAR/WR), president of the Sudan(s) Studies Association of North America, and executive committee member of the International Association of Intercultural Studies (IAIS) in Cairo, Egypt and Bremen, Germany.Kohenet, Dr. Emily Leah Silverman is a Visiting Scholar at The Graduate Theological Union. Berkeley, CA. She received Smicha (ordination) from the Hebrew Priestess Institute and is recent Past President of American Academy of Religion Western Region. Silverman has developed the field study of Feminist Theology of Spiritual Resistance Her current research is on the Feminist theology of Spiritual Resilience and Resistance of Jewish Women during the Nazi Holocaust. She most recently was an invited lecturer at University of Wales and was formerly a lecturer at San Jose State University and taught at Graduate Theological Union. Dr Silverman also investigates the reclaiming and retrieval of Hebrew Priestess lineage, their 12 spiritual pathways and practice. Dr Silverman was the organizer of Rosemary Radford Ruether Frestschrift and co-edited with Dirk Von der Horst and Whitney Bauman "Voices of Feminist Liberation: Writing in Celebrations of Rosemary Ruether." Silverman has also published "Edith Stein and Regina Jonas: Religious Visionaries of the Death Camps." Silverman is a sort after invited speaker who presently teaches at the Aquarian Minyan Yeshiva. She holds an Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and PhD from the GTU.
