Overview
I completed my DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2022, where I then worked as the Departmental Lecturer in Classical Arabic Literature until coming to Cornell. My research focuses primarily on sexuality, gender and emotions in literature and thought in the pre-modern Arab-Islamic world. I am particularly interested in how sexuality and sexual desire were conceived and experienced through imagination. My current book project, Narratives of Love: Chastity, Sexuality and Desire in Medieval Arabic Literature and Thought, focuses on how stories and storytelling, both religious and profane, became central to the construction of moral ideas around sexual lives and desires, how stories were used to imagine the feelings and emotional experience of people caught in the grip of passion.
I am keen to hear from prospective graduate students working in the fields of pre-modern Arabic literature, Islamic studies (primarily pre-modern) and medieval and early-modern Islamic history.
Research Focus
- Arabic Literature
- Islamic Studies
- Sexuality Studies
- Gender Studies
- Queer and Feminist Theory
- History of Emotions
- Intellectual History
Awards and Honors
- Runner-up for the Royal Asiatic Society’s David Morgan Prize 2022
Publications
“It’s All Just Poetry: Writing ʿUmar ibn Abī Rabīʿah’s Life” in Journal of Arabic Literature 52:3–4 (2021), 321–50
“Colonial South America, Identity and Race as Seen by a Chaldean Priest from Baghdad” in CompLit: Journal of European Literature, Arts and Society 2 (2021), 115–43
“Building a Library: The Arabic and Persian Manuscript Collection of Sir William Jones” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 31:1 (2021), 1–70
NES Courses - Fall 2024
- NES 2627 : Introduction to Islam
- NES 3787 : Interpreting the Qur'an
- NES 4991 : Independent Study, Undergraduate Level
- NES 6787 : Interpreting the Qur'an
- NES 6991 : Independent Study: Graduate Level