Occupation
Assistant Professor
Contact
Primary Phone: (773) 236-0099
Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious S
5700 College Rd
Suite 158
Lisle
IL
60532
ABOUT
I am a scholar of global history and cultural history of the Islamic world. My work focuses on representations and perceptions of East Asia and other topics related to the construction and reproduction of difference in Islamicate culture. I completed my Ph.D in history in 2014 at the University of Chicago's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, where I worked with John Woods, Franklin Lewis, and Cornell Fleischer, following completion of a BS in Mathematics with a Specialization in Economics and a BA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. My dissertation was a study of the Khataynameh, "A Chinese System for an Ottoman State: the Frontier, the Millennium, and Ming Bureaucracy in Khaṭāyī's Book of China." In addition to book chapters and articles in journals such as Iranian Studies, Utopian Studies, and Acta Koreana, my major work of translation, The Kushnameh: the Persian Epic of Kush the Tusked, was published by University of California Press in 2022. I am currently director of the NEH-funded Khataynameh Translation Project and am working on a monograph with the tentative title, The Hundred Kings of Samarqand: Silk Road Civic Lore and East Asia in Islamic Political Thought.
Discipline
History
Sub Areas
13th-18th Centuries
Central Asian Studies
Globalization
Iranian Studies
Islamic Studies
Mysticism/Sufi Studies
Ottoman Studies
Persian
Theory
Trade/Investment
World History
Geographic Areas of Interest
All Middle East
Central Asia
Iran
Islamic World
Specialties
Literature Of Geography And Travel
Early Modern Muslims' Perceptions Of China
Political Theory
Languages
Arabic (advanced)
French (advanced)
Persian (native)
Russian (elementary)
Ottoman (intermediate)
Chinese (intermediate)
Turkish (intermediate)
Education
PhD
| 2014
| Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
| University of Chicago
BA
| 2001
| Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
| University of Chicago
BS
| 2001
| Mathematics
| University of Chicago
Abstracts
China Memorialized in Ottoman Texts
The Chinese-Islamic Contact Zone and Vernacular Macrohistory
Poetry, Authorial Presence, and the Construction of a Public in the Khaṭāynāmah (Book of China)
The Geography of Kingship in Persian Epics, 1000 – 1400
Depictions of East Asia and the Islamicate Prehistory of Early Modern Utopias
Labor and Power in the Persian Epic Tradition and Its Intertexts
Race and the Black Chthonic in the Persian Epic Tradition: Zanj and Siyahan in the Kushnameh and Nezami’s Alexander Epic
