Brinkley Messick specializes in the anthropology of law, legal history, written culture, and the circulation and interpretation of Islamic law. He is the author of "The Calligraphic State" (1993), which was awarded the Albert Hourani Prize of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, and "Sharīʿa Scripts: A Historical Anthropology" (2018). He is also co-editor of "Islamic Legal Interpretation" (1996). He is at work on a book on the doctrine and court practice of Shari`a law in the pre-revolutionary twentieth-century Islamic state of highland Yemen.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies & the Department of History.