Rebecca Faulkner is a Ph.D. candidate in the Islam subfield of the Department of Religion. Her current project, “Muhammad Iqbal and the Meanings of South Asian Islamic Modernism” focuses on a highly influential early 20th-century South Asian Islamic modernist’s approach to politics, economics, and orthodoxy. Using these themes, she explores the possibilities of moral life in modernity.

Faulkner has taught in the departments of near eastern studies and religion (“Muslims and the Qur’an”), and, in Fall 2020, she will be teaching in the departments of religion and philosophy (“Religion and Reason”). She has been a graduate teaching fellow at the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning since 2018. She is interested in game pedagogy and participates in several organizations related to its study and development (Reacting to the Past and Game Development Conference).

Recently, her research has been supported by fellowships from the Center for the Study of Religion (twice, in Religion and Culture and Religion and Public Life), the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Center for Digital Humanities. She has also been awarded the national Foreign Language and Area Studies Scholarship and the Critical Language Scholarship.

Prior to joining the Department of Religion at Princeton, Faulkner received an M.A. in Islamic Studies from Columbia University with a thesis on phenomenology and metaphysics of religious experience in Islamic thought. She received dual B.A. summa cum laude in philosophy and religion from the University of Georgia, where she also completed a certificate in Native American studies.

Faulkner’s experience with the Institute of Native American Studies at UGA introduced her to game pedagogy and methodological approaches to research that she continues to use in her work, especially around the topic of religion in literature and decolonial/postcolonial studies.