Rate My Professor Gregory Starrett

Gregory Starrett is Professor of Anthropology in the College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he has taught since 1992. He holds a B.A. from Northwestern University (1983) and a Ph.D. from Stanford University (1991). Starrett conducts field research in Egypt and the United States on the cultural politics of Islamic education and popular culture. His academic interests include secularism, religious commodities, and public culture in Egypt; African-American Muslim communities; Islamophobia and ritual in multicultural education in the US; folklore of bioterrorism and suicide bombing; and the return of right-wing movements to political prominence in Western democracies. He teaches courses on religion, the Middle East, the history of anthropology, and the development of anthropological theory.

Starrett authored Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt (University of California Press, 1998) and co-edited Teaching Islam: Religion and Textbooks in the Middle East (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007). Key publications include 'The Political Economy of Religious Commodities in Cairo' (American Anthropologist, 1995) and 'The Hexis of Interpretation: Islam and the Body in the Egyptian Popular School' (American Ethnologist, 1995). His research appears in prominent journals such as American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, with over 1,900 citations on Google Scholar. Starrett served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology (2020-2025), President of the UNC Charlotte Faculty (2014-2015), and led the university's successful effort to obtain a charter for a Phi Beta Kappa chapter (2016-2022). He was editor of the Review of Middle East Studies (2007-2012), President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association (2009-2010), and serves on the editorial board of Comparative Studies in Society and History. A finalist for UNC Charlotte’s Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence (2011), Starrett has presented on the cultural politics of Islam to audiences at Charlotte churches and community groups, the State Department, the Library of Congress, and universities in the US, Canada, Israel, Germany, and the UK.