William A. Graham (dean)

William Albert Graham, Jr. (born 1943) is an American scholar of Islamic studies and the history of religion, and the Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University.

Biography

Graham was born in August 16, 1943, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He earned his B.A. (1966) in comparative literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) from Harvard University in the History of Religion. Graham joined the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard in 1973, and became professor of the history of religion and Islamic studies in 1985. He has held Guggenheim and Alexander von Humboldt fellowships and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as Director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (1990–96) and master of the undergraduate residential college of Currier House (1991-2003). He was named Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies in 2001, and the following year he joined the divinity school as its dean, where he served for ten years before returning to full-time teaching in 2012.

Selected publications

• Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam (1977)
• Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (1987)
• Three Faiths, One God (2002)
• Islamic and Comparative Religious Studies (2010)
• The Heritage of World Civilizations (1986ff.; 10th ed., 2015)

External links

• Graham's Harvard Divinity School faculty page