My work demonstrates how the methods, concerns, and reading practices of comparative literature can illuminate the cultural lives of societies that were neither structured by the nation-state nor mediated by European languages. By combining the perspective and analytical instincts of a comparatist with philological training in three key Islamicate literary idioms (Classical Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish), my research seeks to redress the imbalances of epistemic power that shape the field of comparative literature.
My first book, How Do You Say “Epigram” in Arabic? Literary History at the Limits of Comparison, uses the methods of archival literary history, Classical Arabic philology, and translation to explore the limitations of the epigram as a category in literary studies. By bringing to light the previously unknown history of Arabic maqatiʿ-poetry, the book demonstrates how extra-European literary histories can inform and radically transform both the intellectual basis of comparative literature and the landscape of world literature.
I am currently at work on my second book, a study of how acts of sexual violence, coercion, and harassment are represented in pre-modern Islamicate literatures and how these representations have been understood, contested, and interpreted by different communities over time. This book draws on literature in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish (as well as other Islamicate languages that I access through translation) in a variety of forms, including poetry, legal texts, narrative, and historiography, as well as premodern visual representations and contemporary interpretations in media. This reflection on the prevalence of sexual violence, coercion, and harassment in the prestigious canon of Islamicate literatures will encourage scholars and students to engage with and further develop an ethics of reading and teaching.
I am a co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures, a journal devoted to the practice and potential of a comparative literature that resists Euroamerican supremacy and epistemic power. Before taking up this editorship in 2021, I spent four years as the associate editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature responsible for pre-modern submissions. I'm a member of the board of directors of the scholarly association Middle East Medievalists, the editorial board of the Journal of World Literature, and the advisory board of Gorgias Press' Modern Muslim World book series.
I studied literary translation with the late master Michael Henry Heim while I was an undergraduate at UCLA. I've translated four novels from Arabic into English as well as several shorter pieces. My co-translation of Raja Alem's The Dove's Necklace tied for 1st place in the Arabic-to-English category at the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation.