Biography

After graduating from UCLA with an MA in Iranian Studies, I will be heading to Cambridge to work on Premodern Persian Literature. With my time as PhD student in Cambridge, I hope to examine the surprisingly diverse body of Persian and Arabic Medieval texts that deal with women's positions and capabilities within the field of Islamic mysticism, or Sufism. I am particularly interested in female "saint"-type figures (awliya), who find some parallels in the Christian tradition. I began studying Persian informally in 2005 and formally in 2007.