Reconceiving Conception: Pregnancy, Paternity, and Women’s Agency in a Medieval Community

Sara Verskin earned her PhD in 2017 from Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Her dissertation "Barren Women: the Intersection of Biology, Medicine, and Religion in the Treatment of Infertile Women in the Medieval Middle East" was awarded the 2018 British Association for Islamic Studies - De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World, and her book based upon it was published by De Gruyter in March 2020. 

The first scholarly book to explore the ramifications of being infertile in the medieval Arab-Islamic world, Barren Women employs examination of legal texts, medical treatises, and works of religious preaching to illuminate attitudes toward mixed-gender interactions, legal theories pertaining to marriage, divorce, and inheritance, and scientific theories of reproduction – and how together these elements contoured the intellectual and social landscape infertile women had to navigate.

Verskin teaches both the history of the Islamic Middle East and the history of western medicine, as well as courses on Islamic thought, comparative religions, and the history of women, family, and gender.

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