Lauren Osborne

osbornle@whitman.edu
Hunter Conservatory 304
509-527-5809
Curriculum Vitae

I am a specialist in Islamic Studies in the study of religion, with a multidisciplinary background in both the study of religion and the practice and study of music. I completed my BA in Religious Studies in BMus in Performance at Lawrence University in Appleton Wisconsin, then my MA and PhD in Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. My first book, published in 2025 on Routledge press, Hearing Islam, focuses on the role of sound and music in Islamic traditions. This book stems from my previous research on the recitation of the Qur'an, on which I have published many articles and chapters. My current research project, a book tentatively titled Sensing the Qur’an, focuses on the role of the human senses both in and in relation to the Qur’an. In my teaching, I focus on sound and sensation in religion, especially in Islam, the text of the Qur'an in interpretation and practice, and theory and methods in the study of religion.

Religion 110 Religion & the Senses
Religion 111 The Sound of Religion
Religion 203 What Is Religion?
Religion 205 American Islam
Religion 207 Islamic Traditions
Religion 217 The Qur'an
Religion 236 Comparative Scriptures
Religion 304 Muslim Bodies
Religion/Film and Media Studies 307 Mediating Religions
Religion/Music 310 Hearing Islam
Religion 321 Islamic Mysticism
Religion 448 Seminar in the Academic Study of Religion

2025, Hearing Islam: The Sounds of a Global Religious Tradition. New York: Routledge.

2024, “Qur’anic Orality and Textual Epistemologies of the Humanities,” ReOrient. 9, number 1, (2024): 114-130. https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/reorient.9.1.0114

2024, “Breath, bodies, and sacred text: Thinking about recitation with al-Ghazālī and Kūkai,” a dialogue collaboratively published with Charlotte Eubanks. postmedieval 15, issue 2 (June 2024): 373–389. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-024-00314-5

2021, “The Relationship of the Oral and the Written,” The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an, edited by Daniel Madigan, Maria Massi Dakake, and George Archer. New York: Routledge

2021, "Breath," Annual Whitman College Convocation Address

2020, "The Mediated Qur’an: Religious Education and Recitation via Online Distance Learning in the Sultanate of Oman," Yale Journal of Music and Religion 6, no. 2: 74-88. https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr/vol6/iss2/5/

2019 "Aural Epistemology: Hearing and Listening in the Text of the Qur'an" and volume introduction, "The Qur'an and Affect," Body and Religion 3, number 1, (2019): 71-93. https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.16810

2019 "Feeling the Words: Sayyid Qutb's Affective Engagement with the Qurʾan in Al-Taswir al-Fanni fi al-Qurʾan," Religion Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12338

2019 Edited work, Syndicate Symposium on Karen Bauer's Gender Hierarchy in the Qur'an. Syndicate Network. https://syndicate.network/symposia/theology/gender-hierarchy-in-the-quran/

2016 "Textual and Paratextual Meaning in the Recited Qur'an: Analysis of a Performance of Surat al-Furqan by Sheikh Mishary bin Rashid al-Afasy." Qur'anic Studies Today, edited by Angelika Neuwirth and Michael Sells. New York: Routledge, 2016. https://www.routledge.com/Quranic-Studies-Today/Neuwirth-Sells/p/book/9781138181953

2016 "The Experience of the Recited Qur'an." Invited contribution for " Bringing Sound into Middle East Studies," a roundtable organized by Carole Woodall and Andrea Stanton. International Journal of Middle East Studies48, issue 01 (February 2016): 124-128. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S002074381500152X