Publications
MY BOOKS
Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran
My project on prayer and poetry was just published: Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran (Stanford University Press). I begin this book with the question of how we can avoid looking at revolutions as either failures or successes. The 1979 revolution in Iran resulted in a mass involvement with theological questions—most notably, what kind of Islam is the true one?
Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt
The cultures and politics of nations around the world may be understood (or misunderstood) in any number of ways. For the Arab world, language is the crucial link for a better understanding of both. Classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab states although it is not spoken as a mother tongue by any group of Arabs.
MY ARTICLES
Notes on Ritual Prayer in Iran: Qunut Choices among a Group of Shi‘i Women
In Approaches to the Qur’an in Contemporary Iran, edited by Alessandro Cancian. Qur’anic Studies Series 18 (Oxford: Oxford University Press in Association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2019).
Review of: Alireza Doostdar, The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam and the Uncanny. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2018). In International Journal of Middle East Studies, 51 (2019).
Unbundling sincerity: Language, mediation, and interiority in comparative perspective
This is an edited collection on comparative notions of sincerity in four religious communities that appeared in the journal Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. The article is called, "The sincere subject: Mediation and interiority among a group of Muslim women in Iran."