Zarate, Arthur
Assistant Professor of Global Humanities
Preferred: arthur.zarate@sjsu.edu
Office Hours
My advising hours are by appointment. To make one, please send me an email.
Education
- Columbia University, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), History, 2018
- Columbia University, Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.), History, 2015
- Columbia University, Master of Arts (M.A.), History, 2013
- University of Wisconsin, Madison, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Double Major, History and Languages and Cultures of Asia, 2010
- University of Wisconsin, Waukesha, 2005-2006
Bio
I’m a historian of the modern Middle East whose research explores Islam, theology, politics, science, and spirituality in twentieth-century Egypt. My first book, Mediating God: Muhammad al-Ghazali and the Politics of Divine Presence in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2025), examines the influential Muslim Brotherhood intellectual Muhammad al-Ghazali and asks what changes when historians take God seriously in modern Islamic political thought.
My current research extends these questions in two directions. One project examines Sufism, Spiritualism, Muslim and Coptic saintly mediation, and the unseen in modern Egypt, with particular attention to how historians can use archival sources to write about what their interlocutors describe as encounters with metaphysical presences and spiritual agencies. A second develops a new intellectual and cultural history of the Muslim Brotherhood.
My scholarship has appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, with an article forthcoming in the International Journal of Middle East Studies. My work combines historical research with approaches drawn from religious studies and anthropology, building on my training at Columbia University as a historian of global Islam. I have conducted extensive archival research in Egypt and the United States and work with Arabic-language primary sources.
At San José State University, I teach primarily in the Humanities Honors Program, an interdisciplinary, team-taught curriculum bringing together global history, literature, religion, philosophy, art, and material culture. I also teach courses in Global Humanities, Religious Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies, ranging from world religions and Middle Eastern history to contemporary global humanities and magic, science and religion. I have developed new courses on colonialism and decolonization and global material cultures. Across these courses, I use historical, literary, religious, visual, and material sources to introduce students to different ways of understanding human experience and to the methods scholars use to interpret them.
I particularly enjoy teaching first-generation college students and students interested in applying the critical-thinking skills they develop in the classroom to their lives outside it. My goal is for students to leave my classroom with a stronger sense of how and why the humanities matter.
My research has been supported by San José State University, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, and Columbia University’s Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, as well as by Arabic language training from the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad in Cairo, Egypt.
Selected Publications
Mediating God: Muhammad al-Ghazali and the Politics of Divine Presence in Twentieth-Century Egypt. Oxford University Press, 2025.
“Scouting for God: Metaphysics and Masculinity in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Jawwāla Program, 1933–1948.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, forthcoming.
“Cosmopolitan Spirits: Islam and the Experimental Cosmologies of Egypt’s Spiritualist Movement, 1947–1960.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 68, no. 1 (2026): 114–139.
“Sufi Reformism and the Politics of Enchantment in Nasser’s Egypt (1954–1970).” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 89, no. 1 (2021): 143–173.
“The American Sufis: Self-Help, Sufism, and Metaphysical Religion in Postcolonial Egypt.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 61, no. 4 (2019): 864–893.
Short Essay
“Between Discipline and Wonder: On Writing the Unseen into Islamic History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, “Behind the Scenes,” February 28, 2026.