Monica Mitri is a PhD candidate in religious studies at USC. She studies the Arabic-speaking Christians of medieval Egypt, focusing on their intellectual contributions, reception of earlier Christian literature, and active negotiation of their place in Islamicate society. She is currently writing her dissertation, “A Tale of Four Brothers: Awlād al-ʿAssāl and the Copto-Arabic Golden Age,” where she analyzes the medieval intellectual renaissance among Egypt’s Copts through the eyes of the four brothers al-ʿAssāl. As prolific authors, patrons, societal elites, and powerful members of the community, they were central to the movement, and their writings demarcate Coptic history into pre- and post-ʿAssāl eras. This makes their literary corpus a major site for understanding how the medieval Coptic community negotiated questions of identity, law, linguistic change, and relations with the religious other.

Monica’s articles and reviews have been published in the Journal of Methods and Theory in the Study of Religion, The International Journal of Systematic Theology, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, and Reading Religion.