Education

• AB, National University of Singapore
• MSc, London School of Economics and Political Science
• PhD, University of California, Los Angeles

Teren Sevea is a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia, and received his PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining HDS, he served as Assistant Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Sevea is the author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which received the 2022 Harry J. Benda Prize, awarded by the Association of Asian Studies. Sevea also co-edited Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia (ISEAS, 2009). He is currently completing his second book entitled Singapore Islam: The Prophet's Port and Sufism across the Oceans, and is working on his third monograph, provisionally entitled Animal Saints and Sinners: Lessons on Islam and Multispeciesism from the East.

Sevea is the author of book chapters and journal articles pertaining to Indian Ocean networks, Sufi textual traditions, Islamic erotology, Islamic third worldism, and the socioeconomic significance of spirits, that have been published in journals such as Third World Quarterly, Modern Asian Studies, The Indian Economic and Social History Review and Journal of Sufi Studies. In addition to this, he is a coordinator of a multimedia project entitled “The Lighthouses of God: Mapping Sanctity Across the Indian Ocean,” which investigates the evolving landscapes of Indian Ocean Islam through photography, film, and GIS technology.

 

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

 

BOOKS

 

Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Awarded 2022 Harry J. Benda Prize, by the Association of Asian Studies.

 

Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia (co-edited with R. Michael Feener), Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009.

 

 

ARTICLES; CHAPTERS

 

‘Sufism, Miracles and Oceanic Fatwas: From Jakarta with Love’, Journal of Sufi Studies, 11: 1, 2022.

 

‘Exilic Journeys and Lives: Paths leading to a Mughal Grave in Rangoon’, The Indian

Economic and Social History Review, 59:2, 2022.

 

‘Indian Ocean Studies and Saintly Materials from the Islamic East’, History Compass, 20:7, 2022. ‘Miracles and Madness: A ‘Prophet’ of Singapore Islam’, Comparative Islamic

Studies, 14: 1-2, 2021.

 

‘Reading Alatas’s Thomas Stamford Raffles in 2021: Whose lives matter?’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 43:1, 2022.

 

‘Pawangs on the Frontier: Miracles, Prophets and Divinities in the Ricefields of Modern Malaya’, Modern Asian Studies, 54, 2019.

 

‘Writing a History of a Saint: Writing an Islamic History of Singapore’, NSC Working Paper, Number 27, 2018.

 

‘Keramats Running Amok: Islamic Histories and Parahistories of Travel, Belonging, ‘Crimes’ and ‘Madness’’, Belonging Across the Bay of Bengal: Migrations, Networks, Circulations. Religious Rites, Colonial Migrations, National Rights, Michael Laffan ed., London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

 

‘Sex to the Next-World: Esoteric Science for the Penis-bearing Mualad’, Shi'ism in South East Asia: 'Alid Piety and Sectarian Constructions,

Michael Feener and Chiara Formaichi, eds., London: Hurst, 2016.

 

‘Making Medinas in the East: Islamist Connections and Progressive Islam,’ Islamic Connections: Studies of Muslim South and Southeast Asia, Feener and Sevea, eds., Singapore: ISEAS,

2009.

‘Islamist Intellectual Space: 'True Islam' and the Ummah in the East,’ Asian Journal of Social Science, Volume 35, Numbers 4-5, 2007.

 

‘Islamist Questioning of Colonialism: Towards an Understanding of the Islamist Oeuvre,’ Third World Quarterly, Volume 28,

Issue 7, 2007.

 

PUBLIC-FACING SCHOLARSHIP

 

Podcast Conversation (Akbar’s Chamber - Experts Talk Islam), on Singapore Islam: How a Commercial Hub became a Muslim Melting Pot, available on: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/singapore-islam-how-a-commercial-h... a/id1532553011?i=1000584540852

 

‘Keramat: Beyond Imagined Divisions’, Engaging Religion, Teaching Religion in Public Initiative, Indiana University’s Center for Religion and the Human, accessible at: https://crh.indiana.edu/engaging-religion/essays/sevea-essay.html

Podcast Conversation (New Books Network), on Miracles and Material Life, available on: https://newbooksnetwork.com/teren-sevea-miracles-and-material-life-rice-... guns-in- islamic-malaya-cambridge-up-2020

 

Podcast Conversation (Ajam Media Collective) on Sufi Miracle Workers of Malaya, available on: https://ajammc.com/2021/04/26/ajam-podcast-37-miracle-workers-of- malaya/

 

Podcast Conversation (Ajam Media Collective) on Of Gardens and Graves in Kashmir, available on: https://ajammc.com/2019/11/03/ajam-podcast-18-kashmir/

 

‘Listening to Leaves: Historical Memory of a Keramat in Contemporary Singapore.’ The Sufi and the Bearded Man: Re-Membering a Keramat in Contemporary Singapore. Singapore: NUS Museum, 2011.