About

Mehmet Karabela is a scholar specializing in comparative religion and philosophy. He is the author of Islamic Thought Through Protestant Eyes (2021), a study of post-Reformation German Lutheran scholars, which was a finalist for the Reformation Book Award. His research focuses on the interactions between Jewish, Christian, and Islamic intellectual histories during the early modern period, exploring how these traditions borrowed from and reformulated each other.

 

In a separate line of research, Karabela is interested in how these syncretic ideas persist in modern culture, particularly in the works of Leonard Cohen. He examines how Cohen’s works reflect a world in which the sacred within the secular permeates popular music.

 

In collaboration with international partners, Karabela also produces contemporary dance and music for stage performances.

 

Dr. Karabela holds a Ph.D. from McGill University and currently serves as the Interim Associate Director of the Ani & Mark Gabrellian Humanities Center at the University of Rochester, New York. He has taught courses on world religions, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, religion and democracy, political theology, religion and politics in the modern Middle East as well as advanced seminars such as the European perception of Jews and Muslims during the Enlightenment, convivencia in medieval Spain and multiculturalism in the Ottoman Empire.