Dr. David Strohl, 2016
Curriculum Vitae
David Strohl is now Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Colby College.
David Strohl is an assistant professor of Anthropology at Colby College in the United States. He earned his PhD in socio-cultural anthropology from the University of Virginia in 2011. His research focuses on Muslim societies in South Asia and addresses topics like morality, citizenship, religious authority, and tolerance. While at the MPI-MMG, Strohl completed work on a book manuscript titled Moral projects: social imaginaries of religious revival and civic engagement among the Ismaili community of Mumbai. In the book, Strohl examines how Ismailis have worked to become pious Muslims and good citizens through ethical self-fashioning and, crucially, efforts to create moral order. He analyzes how collective endeavors like policing social boundaries, enacting religious reform, and encouraging civic engagement mold individuals into ethical subjects just as they seek to establish moral communities like the Ismaili jamat, the Muslim ummah, and Indian civil society. Although anthropologists have recently been inclined towards individualistic theories of ethics, Moral Projects spotlights the importance of communitarian thought for understanding people’s moral lives.