The Persian King Darius I (reigned 522-486 BCE) constructed a canal connecting the Nile to the Red Sea – an ancient precursor to the Suez Canal that made it possible to sail from Egypt to Persia, and to places in between.

This paper examines how the description of Aaron’s vestments in Exod 28 encodes a distinct concept of high priestly leadership. This chapter of Exodus has garnered relatively little attention in biblical scholarship, even among recent and comprehensive treatments of the high priest in the biblical and post-biblical traditions. This general n…[Read more]

Slides for a Q&A session about the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) with staff at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM).

Through the case of Emerson’s appropriation of Persian poetry this volume provides a thought-provoking example of how the literary founding father of a nation is cosmopolitan and receptive of foreign cultures in what might seem a purely “nationalistic” agenda. It will appeal to those in the field of Persian literature, comparative liter…[Read more]

“Biopolitics” has become a popular concept for interpreting the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the term is often used vaguely, as a buzzword, and therefore loses its specificity and relevance. This article systematically explains what the biopolitical lens offers for analyzing and normatively criticizing the politics of the coronavirus. I argue that…[Read more]

This mini-essay was published as part of a “dossier” of authors discussing various forms of “queer inhumanisms.” In my piece, I address the relations between queer studies and post/humanist studies through the lens of Michel Foucault’s 1981 interview, “Friendship as a Way of Life.” These relations are tied together in critique but also in various…[Read more]

In celebration of the tenth anniversary of the second centennial of Ākhūndzade’s birth, three Azerbaijani texts in translation by the Molière of Azerbaijan. The texts—one poem, one letter, and one prose text—reflect Ākhūndzāde’s sharp, sometimes vitriolic, take on Rūmī ’s teaching (a dangerous, incomprehensible word jumble), most poetry and po…[Read more]

First translated into Persian in 1949, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is among the most popular works of American fiction in Iran. Although the anti-US policy of the post-1979 political system has tried to erase the manifestations of the previous period’s American influence, Iranian interest in Huckleberry Finn has been inc…[Read more]

An article (20 p., PDF) about the claims and reality of traditional spiritual and rational philosophy, how they have set back, damaged, and obstructed improvements of the human condition, and how we can overcome these impediments to a thriving existence and find a new beginning.

This essay explores Maimonides’ explanation of the Bible’s rationale behind the ritual sacrifices, namely to help wean the Jews away from idolatrous rites. After clearly elucidating Maimonides’ stance on the topic, this essay examines his view from different angles with various possible precedents in earlier rabbinic literature for such an under…[Read more]

In this paper I employ social scientific theories that conceptualize space as existing in physical, mental and symbolic fields simultaneously, and combine them with memory studies, in order to offer a new reading of how the authors of Leviticus construed Israel’s cultic origins and what aims they were pursuing with this composition.

Für ein Gespräch über die Themen Political Correctness, Identitätspolitik, Streitkultur und die Rolle der politischen Bildung kamen im Juli 2021 Saba-Nur Cheema von der Bildungsstätte Anne Frank und Dr. Karsten Schubert von der Universität Freiburg in einem Zoom-Raum zusammen. Die Fragen stellten Prof. Dr. Beate Rosenzweig und Petra Barz, beide…[Read more]

The “Spanish influenza” pandemic that struck Egypt in fall 1918 resulted in the death of eleven out of every one thousand people. Despite the mass suffering caused by the pandemic, it has been largely ignored by historians. I describe how the Egyptian public health service was unprepared for a major health crisis because resources were red…[Read more]

Chapter on the interactions between Roman theatrical tradition and late dramatic production in Greek language.

Introductory chapter to the collective volume ‘Theatre and Metatheare: Definitions, Problems, Limits’

The aim of this book is to explore the definition(s) of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ that scholars use when studying the ancient Greek world. Although in modern languages their meaning is mostly straightforward, both concepts become problematical when applied to ancient reality. In fact, ‘theatre’ as well as ‘metatheatre’ are used in many differe…[Read more]

Identity politics is subject to similar critiques in contemporary public debate and political theory. A central topos of this critique is that identity politics is essentializing: it fixes subjects to their social position and resorts to a politics of
particularity that leads to divisions in national citizenship and democratic discourse (the…[Read more]

This article provides a short history of the methods and tools developed by the Pelagios initiative: a series of seven projects dedicated to linking digital historical resources based on the geographic places to which they relate and refer. The first section of the article situates the work within the wider field of semantic and geospatial…[Read more]

In this paper, I explore the literary aesthetics of Attalid Pergamon, one of the Ptolemies’ fiercest cultural rivals in the Hellenistic period. Traditionally, scholars have reconstructed Pergamene poetry from the city’s grand and monumental sculptural programme, hypothesizing an underlying aesthetic dichotomy between the two kingdoms: Ale…[Read more]

This article reconsiders a number of the metapoetic oppositions which Harder has identified between Callimachus and Apollonius (in the lead article of this volume of Aevum Antiquum, ‘Aspects of the Interaction between Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus’) and subjects them to closer scrutiny. First, I explore two metapoetic motifs (talking birds…[Read more]