Salaam, Shalom, Peace! My name is Christopher Schwartz. I am a journalist and student specializing in the areas of Arab and Islamic civilization within the contexts of global religious history, philology, and archæology.

I am particularly interested in the Near Eastern Late Antiquity and how the era relates to the contemporary world. Among my other interests are Qur'anic criticism, Hellenistic/Stoic philosophy, American philosophy, Confucianism, evolutionary theory, space exploration, and theodicy. A bit eclectic, true, but very fun.

Though I have been published in traditional print newspapers, my preferred medium is New Media. In 2004, I became the editor for Thinking-East, an online publishing platform for university students in the Middle East and Central Asia. The website was the brainchild of Ben Paarmann, a good friend of mine from the School of Oriental and African Studies. It has since evolved into neweurasia, a network of weblogs focusing on Central Asia and the Caucasus. I currently serve as editor for the network's forthcoming book, CyberChaikhana: Digital Conversations from Central Asia.

I am also a poet. My themes are: temporality and eternity, memory and history, human relatonships, and monotheistic spirituality. I will soon publish my first book of poems entitled, The Transcendence, with La Salle University Press. The 25 poems therein tell the story of a young man in a holy war against God -- and himself. Each poem is accompanied by artwork by myself and the inimitable Ben Harvey. (I seem to do all my best work with guys named Ben.)

My weblog is now fully operational, replete with writing samples, the latest updates, and reflections. Feel free to comment on any of my posts. Additionally, I have updated my credentials page, and I will soon be publishing a PDF copy of my Master's thesis, entitled, "The Memory of Musaylima and the Origins of Islam," here.

I may be contacted via e-mail: te {dot} schwartz {at} gmail {dot} com. For credentials, news updates, projects, and so on, confer the menu on the left. By the way, this website is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer. If you're using Mozilla Firefox or Opera and the page gets a bit scrunched up, hit the refresh button.