Ben-Dor Benite, Zvi

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Ben-Dor Benite, Zvi

PERSONAL:

Married.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, New York University, King Juan Carlos I of Spain Bldg., 53 Washington Square S., 7th Fl., New York, NY 10012; fax: 212-995-4017. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academic and historian. New York University, New York, NY, assistant professor of history.

WRITINGS:

Ha-Mahpekhah Ha-Mizrahit: Shalosh Masot 'al Ha-Tsiyonut Veha-Mizrahim, ha-Merkaz le-informatsyah alternativit (Jerusalem, Israel), 1999.

The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China, Harvard University Asia Center (Cambridge, MA), 2005.

Contributor to academic journals, including Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, Revue d'Études Palestiniennes, Theory and Criticism, and Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

SIDELIGHTS:

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite is an academic and historian. He acts as an assistant professor of history at New York University. His academic interests include Chinese and world history, Islamic cultures and traditions in Asia, comparative human rights, Diaspora and historiography, and historical accounts of religious minorities. Ben-Dor Benite also contributes to academic journals, including Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, Revue d'Études Palestiniennes, Theory and Criticism, and Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. Ben-Dor Benite published his first book, Ha-Mahpekhah Ha-Mizrahit: Shalosh Masot 'al Ha-Tsiyonut Veha-Mizrahim, in 1999.

In 2005, Ben-Dor Benite published The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China. The book analyzes the Chinese-language writings about the cultural mixing of Chinese and Islamic elements in China. The book focuses more on what the Chinese Muslims of the Ming and Qing dynasties thought about themselves. R. Kent Guy, writing in Pacific Affairs, commented that Ben-Dor Benite "offers a new understanding" about the Chinese Muslims in his book and provides "a careful account of the multi-centered Islamic community of late imperial China and its social logic." Guy concluded: "The great merit of The Dao of Muhammad is that it raises such questions [about the unique nature of Chinese Muslims], and catalogs and evaluates the sources needed to answer them, the Han Kitab."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 2006, Henrietta Harrison, review of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China, p. 132.

Journal of Asian Studies, August, 2006, Michael G. Chang, review of The Dao of Muhammad, p. 603.

Pacific Affairs, spring, 2006, R. Kent Guy, review of The Dao of Muhammad, p. 112.