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
My research interests focus on literary canon formation and conceptions of authorship in pre-colonial Persian and Urdu literary traditions; commentarial practices in pre-19th century Persian literary cultures; translation theory, especially as it relates to inter-semiotic translations between Islamic and Indic traditions; and ethical and political thought in late Mughal India. I am currently working on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded project on ideas of the ethical and political in 17th and 18th century Mughal commentaries on Sa鈥榙i's Gulist膩n (Rose Garden, 1258).
Teaching
The undergraduate course I will teach this semester, 'Introduction to Persian Literature' (ISLA 388), introduces students to a selection of verse and prose texts from the 10th to 19th century canon of Persian and concludes in its last quarter with a consideration of Persian novels, stories and poems authored in Iran since the early 20th century. This concluding quarter calls attention to the ways in which literary modernity and modernism in Persian relates in various modes (such as appropriation, ironization, rejection) to the traditional literature studied in the preceding weeks.
Representative Publications
. Co-translation of Sohrab Sepehri, , first published in hardback by Brill in 2022; re-issued in paperback by Brill in March 2024
. 鈥溾�樷�� Journal of South Asian Intellectual History (2024) 1-22.
. 鈥溾�� Journal of World Philosophies 8 (Summer 2023): 1-16.听
. 鈥楰hushgu鈥檚 Dream: Building an Ark with 膧rzu and B墨dil鈥� in Sabk: Essays on Form, Manner and the Stylistics of Metaphor in Persian and Indo- Persian literatures (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
. Khanbaghi, Aptin, (Ed.) Abstract of 鈥楧ary膩-e lat膩fat鈥� and Abstract of 鈥楬aft tam膩sh膩鈥� in Muslim Civilizations Abstracts Series, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014).
. 鈥楾he Local Universality of Poetic Pleasure: Sir膩juddin 鈥楢li Kh膩n 膧rzu and the Speaking Subject鈥� in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, March 2013. Vol. 50 No. 1.
. 鈥溾��, Encyclopedia Iranica, 2013.
. 鈥溾��, Perso-Indica. An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions, F. Speziale - C. W. Ernst, eds.
. 鈥溾��, Perso-Indica. An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions, F. Speziale - C. W. Ernst, eds.
. 鈥溾��, Encyclopedia Iranica, 2012
. Review of Ranjit Hoskote, I, Lalla: the Poems of Lal Ded (Delhi: Penguin, 2011) in South Asian History and Culture, 2012.
. Review of Sunil Sharma and Paul E. Losenksky, In the Bazaar of Love: Selected Poems of Amir Khusrau in Biblio (Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011) (Volume XVII, Nos. 1 & 2, January-February 2012).
. 鈥楩initude and the Authorship of Fiction: Muhammad 鈥楢wfi鈥檚 Preface to his Lubab al-alb膩b (The Piths of Intellects, 1221 C.E.)鈥� in The Arab Studies Journal, Spring 2011. Vol. XIX No.1.
. Translation from the Persian of 鈥楢 Letter of Grievance from my Wanderings鈥� by Mirza Asadollah Khan Ghalib in The Last Bungalow: Writings on Allahabad, (Delhi: Penguin India, 2007).
Conference Papers
. 鈥淜hushugu鈥檚 Dream,鈥� American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Conference, University of Toronto, April 5-7, 2013.
. 鈥淏idel鈥檚 Portrait,鈥� Sixth Biennial Convention of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, Bosniak Institute, Sarajevo, September 2-6, 2013.
. Keynote Lecture: "The Local Universality of Poetic Pleasure: Sirajuddin 鈥楢li Khan Arzu and Persian Literary Theory" at Zukunftsphilologie: Revisiting the Canons of Textual Scholarship at the Freie University, Berlin, 12 January 2012.
听
听
听
听
