Samera Esmeir’s research focuses on the contemporary Middle East, specifically on questions of violence, war, and the security state. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Juridical Humanity, in which she investigates the role played by the violence of imperial colonialism in the constitution of "universal humanity," and in inscribing the human as the teleology of modern law.

Saba Mahmood’s research interests lie in exploring historically specific articulations of secular modernity in postcolonial societies, with particular attention to issues of subject formation, religiosity, embodiment, and gender. Her most recent publications include The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject and Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (with Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, and Judith Butler).

Part of the Why War? Seminar Series.