I am an historian and critic of religious literatures, specializing in Islamic studies. As an historian, I read religious literature for clues to its historical contexts and implied audiences. As a critic, I study the ways in which the use of literary devices such as allusion, citation, and echo suggest intertextual relations among religious literatures and the communities who hold them sacred. Where Muslim literatures are concerned, my work builds upon the pioneering studies of Egyptian modernists such as Taha Husayn, Amin al-Khuli, and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd.