Heather Sharkey

Heather Sharkey

Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies

Heather J. Sharkey is Professor and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, where she specializes in the history of the modern Middle East and North Africa. Her books include Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan(University of California Press 2003); American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton University Press 2008); and A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press 2017).  She has edited Cultural Conversions: Unexpected Consequences of Christian Missionary Encounters in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (Syracuse University Press 2013); with Mehmet Ali Doğan, American Missionaries in the Modern Middle East: Foundational Encounters(University of Utah Press, 2011); and with Jeffrey Edward Green, The Changing Terrain of Religious Freedom(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).  Having interdisciplinary research interests grounded in history and anthropology, she teaches seminars on the study of food; migration and mobility; religious intercommunal relations; and nationalism, colonialism, and postcolonial cultures.  Since 2021 she has hosted an online talk series, sponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, entitled, “Bite-Sized Talks: Middle Eastern Food and Foodways across History.”