Queens College of the City University of New York

Faculty Member, History

Assistant Professor of History

About

My first book, Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World: Blighted Bodies (Edinburgh/Columbia, 2012), investigates a generational chain of six male Sunni scholars linked by the social bonds of friendship and academic mentorship in Cairo, Damascus and Mecca who produced writings about bodies marked by ‘blights’ (ʿāhāt, in Arabic) – a category that included individuals who were cognitively and physically different, disabled and ill.

I have recently been named a Marie Curie Fellow by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung for the academic years 2012-2014. During this time, I will work in residence at Universität Münster's Institut für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft on my second book project, an investigation of the historical significance of blue and green eyes in the Islamic Middle Ages.

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