My research examines the impacts of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Simin Daneshvar and a selection of theirintimate intellectual circle on the hegemonic masculinity of their era as it approached the“unthinkable” Iranian Revolution of 1979. Given that Al-e Ahmad became so profoundlyinfluentia…
Despite the Coptic Orthodox community’s long history, it continues to be understudied and misrepresented. Specifically, there is a lack of literature available to the Coptic Orthodox community regarding mental health issues. Educating the community about mental health will promo…
This study analyzes closely the Arabic travel narratives of three Christians from the Ottoman Levant and Near East, who travelled to what they called the ‘lands of the Christians’—ie. Europe. Paul of Aleppo (Būluṣ al-Ḥalabī), a deacon of the Orthodox Church, travelled from 1652 …
This creative thesis explores the story of Sakine Cansiz, one of the first women activists and a central figure of the Kurdish liberation movement. By taking into account different sources of Sakine Cansiz’s life and role in paving the way for women’s equality in the Kurdish fre…
This thesis offers a thematic investigation of Saudi women's novels between 1958 and 2016, following the genetic structuralist approach developed by Lucien Goldmann in the 1960s. It thus establishes and provides a nuanced understanding of two strong relationships: one between th…
The field of orality studies has provided new perspectives and insights on a vast array of literature, including the Gospel of Mark and the Qur'an. Despite numerous historical and literary parallels between these two works, the enriched perspectives gained by orality studies hav…
This dissertation takes as its point of departure two key insights: first, that millenarian, universalist forms of thought were ubiquitous in late medieval and early modern intellectual history, whether in the Islamicate heartlands or Renaissance Europe; second, that the occult …
The monotheistic tradition prohibits usury as it is considered to be an immoral act. It is interesting that the Islamic finance industry today deals in usury despite Islam's undisputed prohibition of it. The conflict embodies the millennia-old battle between monotheistic moralis…
Based on four years of ethnographic and archival research, this dissertation examines the pedagogical role of Sufi poetry (ilahi ) in a transnational Sufi order, the Qadiri Rifa'i Tariqa (QRT). Extensive interviews in the United States, Mauritius, and South Africa (2008) are aug…
My dissertation provides an introduction to the poetry and mystical thought of Mirza Abd al-Qadir Bedil (1644-1720), perhaps the foremost representative of the so-called "Indian style" of Persian poetry, through the study of his first long narrative poem, Muh[dotbelow]it[dotbelo…
This dissertation examines the representations of late Egyptian President Gamal 'Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) in Egyptian literature and film. It focuses on how the historical character of Nasser has emerged in the Egyptian imaginary--novel, short stories, autobiographies, and films…
The mediaeval Islamicate world was dominated by a language-obsessed culture that placed great value on words and their meanings. These words and meanings could, for those who used them, make the difference between both earthly success or failure, and salvation or damnation in th…
This dissertation explores points of literary contact between Arabic and English novels in order to write a transnational history of the genre. Focusing on early novels that think beyond the nation--English novels of the eighteenth century that imagine the East and Arabic novels…
This dissertation explores the study and interpretation of the Divan (poetry collection) of Hafiz of Shiraz (d. ca. 1389), the most celebrated lyric poet of classical Persian, in the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire and discusses the ways in which Hafiz's Persian text was read, …
This dissertation explores contemporary memoirs in English by transnational women authors writing during the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. Centered on questions of language as primary identity marker, my analysis follows these authors' identity construction wit…
The Battle of S[dotbelow]iffin (36/657) is the flash point in the emergence of sects within the Islamic religion. This dissertation traces the presentation of the story S[dotbelow]iffin in a specific line of Arabic universal histories, starting with the establishment of the "vul…
Mian Mohammad Sharif's Muslim Thought: Its Origin and Achievements was first published in 1951 in Lahore, Pakistan. Discussing the most important facts about the origin and the evolution of Islamic science and philosophy, it points out historical connections between the Islamic …