Associate Professor
Graduate Program Director
I am Associate Professor of Persian-Iranian Studies and have worked in the Institute of Islamic Studies since 2009. I teach across all periods of Persian literature with a specialization in the Persian poetry of pre-colonial South Asia. My first book, Persian Authorship and Canonicity in Late Mughal Delhi: Building an Ark (Routledge, 2016), is a study of poetics and politics in the work of the poet 'Abd al-Qa虅dir Bedil (d.1720) and his circle. My second book, Sohrab Sepehri, The Eight Books: A Complete English Translation (Brill, 2022) is a co-translation with an introduction of the collected poems of Sohrab Sepehri, a major Iranian modernist. I am completing a monograph on the poetics of the famous quintet of Persian poems by Nizami Ganjavi (d.1209). My critical edition and blank verse translation of Amir Khusraw's Nuh Sipihr (The Nine Skies) is forthcoming with Brill. Forthcoming with Penguin India is an anthology of my English translations of Persian literature on India.
I offer a graduate seminar on pre-modern literary theory and meta-literary discourses called Pre-Modern Persian Literary Criticism; another on Islamicate discourses and practices of selfhood called Autobiography in the Islamic World; another on Amir Khusraw; and another on Nizami Ganjavi. I also teach undergraduate courses on Persian literature in English translation and on the literatures (especially Urdu and Persian) and histories of Islam in South Asia.
Research Interests
I am mainly interested in historically grounded and theoretically informed comparative literary studies of Persian and other literatures. My most recent journal publications have focused on the relations between prosody, mysticism and poetics across Persian, Braj Bhasha, Sanskrit and Arabic; and on the intellectual eclecticism of early modern South Asian Sufi visions of selfhood. I am completing a monograph on the poetics of Nizami Ganjavi's (d.1209) famous quintet of long poems in their multi-religious and multilingual trans-Caucasian context. My introduction to my critical edition and blank verse translation of Amir Khusraw's 1318 mixed genre court poem The Nine Skies (forthcoming with Brill) sets forth its poetics in relation to ambient Persian and Arabic literatures as well as explicating its appropriations of Sanskrit courtly poetry in cantos.
Representative Publications
- 鈥溾�淭o What Song Does the Vein of Poetry鈥檚 Lute Throb?鈥� The Hypotactic Poetics of B墨dil鈥檚 Persian Ghazals in Sanskrit-Hindi-Arabic Meters.鈥�Journal of South Asian Intellectual History 6 (2023): 163-84.
- 鈥淎 Novel Model of Mind in B墨del鈥檚 Sinai of Enlightenment.鈥� Journal of World Philosophies 8 (Summer 2023): 1-16.
- 鈥淭wo Interpretive Postures and Two Kinds of Friendship in Mughal Commentaries on Sa鈥榙墨鈥檚 骋耻濒颈蝉迟腻苍鈥�. Publication of Modern Languages Association/ PMLA, Volume 137, Issue 2, March, 2022, pp. 246 - 261.
- 鈥淔raming Bedil, Arguing the Indo-Persian Self鈥� (co-authored with Sajjad Rizvi as an introduction to this special issue on Bedil and selfhood). Journal of South Asian Intellectual History (June 2020). (June 2020).
- 鈥淚nscribing the Eternal into the Everyday: Voice in Bedil鈥檚 搁耻辩补鈥櫮乼鈥�. Journal of South Asian Intellectual History (June 2020).
- 鈥淭ranslating R膩ma as a Proto-Mu岣mmadan Prophet: Mas墨岣モ�檚 Masnav墨-i R膩m va S墨t膩鈥�. Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 65, 2018.
- 鈥淐limbing with 峁⒛佲�檈b, Sinking with Ghan墨: A Comparison of Two Ghazals on Poetry.鈥� International Journal of Persian Literature, Volume 2, 2017.
- 鈥淏墨dil鈥檚 Portrait: Asceticism and Autobiography鈥�. Philological Encounters. Leiden: Brill: Volume 1, Issue 1-4, 2016.
鈥溾��. Encyclopedia Iranica, 2015.
- 鈥淭he Local Universality of Poetic Pleasure: Sir膩juddin 鈥楢li Kh膩n 膧rzu and the Speaking Subject鈥�. The Indian Economic and Social History Review, March 2013. Volume, 50 No. 1.
鈥�鈥�. Encyclopedia Iranica, 2013.
- 鈥溾��. Encyclopedia Iranica, 2012.
- 鈥淔initude and the Authorship of Fiction: Muhammad 鈥楢wfi鈥檚 Preface to his Lub膩b al-alb膩b (The Piths of Intellects, 1221 C.E.)鈥�. The Arab Studies Journal, Spring 2011. Vol. XIX No.1.
