Kimberly L. Hart, assistant professor of anthropology, will be a member at the Institute for Advanced Study, one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. Members are selected by the institute’s faculty from among more than 1,500 applicants. Past faculty members include Albert Einstein, Clifford Geertz, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Hart will join the School of Social Science for the 2010–2011 academic year; the school’s focal theme will be secularism.
Since coming to Buffalo State in 2007, Hart has begun research on transformations in Sunni Islamic practice in rural western Turkey. This research raises questions on the nature and construction of secularism because the Turkish state constructs Sunni Islamic doctrine and practice via a state body, the Presidency of Religious Affairs, also known as the Diyanet. The people Hart studies are very much involved in this official state Islam as well as in Islamic movements and traditional practices.
Hart is specifically interested in how Islamic practice is enacted and constructed among people who do not belong to specific political or ideological Islamic movements, but combine several. There is a gendered element, in terms of both male and female practice, and Hart studies both men and women.
Photo gallery of Hart's research in the Yuntdag of western Turkey.