Matthew R. Hotham

Matthew R. Hotham serves as Associate Professor of Religious Studies within the Department of History at Ball State University's College of Sciences and Humanities. His teaching portfolio includes foundational courses on Islam (RELS 275) and the Qur'an (RELS 208), alongside advanced seminars examining Animals and Religion, Religion Colonialism and Modernity, and Islamic Mysticism through experiential pedagogy incorporating role-playing, sensory elements, and museum visits.

His academic credentials feature:

• PhD in Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2016)
• MTS in Religious Studies, Harvard Divinity School (2009)
• MFA in Creative Writing, Syracuse University (2007)
• BA in English and Religion, Colgate University (2003)

Dr. Hotham's research employs embodied, affective, and material frameworks to analyze religious phenomena across historical contexts. His scholarship bifurcates into two interconnected domains: (1) medieval Persian Sufi textual traditions, particularly Nizami Ganjavi's Treasury of Mysteries, and (2) contemporary Western constructions of Muslim identity through animal imagery in media. This work investigates how sensory experiences—olfactory, gustatory, and tactile practices—demarcate religious boundaries and construct the 'Muslim other'.

His publication record reveals consistent interdisciplinary engagement with embodiment theory spanning Islamic mysticism, religious pedagogy, and postcolonial critique. Recent works bridge 13th-century Persian literature with modern cultural analysis, demonstrating how religious identity manifests through bodily comportment across temporal divides—a methodology reflecting his fieldwork across India, Iran, Malaysia, Morocco, Syria, and Turkey.

As an institutional contributor, Dr. Hotham advises Religion Conversation Hour, a student-run weekly discussion forum exploring religious traditions, and chairs the Midwest Region American Academy of Religion section on Literature and Sacred Texts in the Study of Religion, facilitating scholarly exchange in his specialty area.