austinomalley

Austin O'Malley
austinomalley@arizona.edu
Personal Site
https://menas.arizona.edu/person/austin-omalley
O'Malley, Austin
Assistant Professor

Austin O’Malley (PhD University of Chicago, 2017) is a scholar of Persian literature with a focus on didacticism and religious poetry. His first book, The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction: Farid al-Din ‘Attar and Persian Sufi Didacticism (Edinburgh UP, 2023) shows how ‘Attar’s poems idealize their own reception and implicitly theorize their poetic work; it thereby uncovers an emic poetics of didacticism in which speech is likened to a medicine, affecting the bodies, hearts, and souls of its listeners over and above any purely communicative function. He has also published on hagiography, Sufi ritual practice, and the modern global reception of Persian verse.    

Currently Teaching

RELI 277A – History of the Middle East: 600-1453

In this course, students take a humanistic disciplinary perspective to explore the cultural products of the pre-modern Middle East and answer questions about its historical development. Using primary sources in translation and secondary scholarship, students will explore the context of the rise of Islam; the process of conversion and expansion across the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia; the crystallization of Shi'ism and changing notions of religious authority; and the impact of Turkish migrations and Mongol conquests. They will become familiar with major genres of pre-modern Middle Eastern literary, religious, and scientific writings, and use techniques of close reading to answer questions about those texts' ideological positions and contexts.

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In this course, students take a humanistic disciplinary perspective to explore the cultural products of the pre-modern Middle East and answer questions about its historical development. Using primary sources in translation and secondary scholarship, students will explore the context of the rise of Islam; the process of conversion and expansion across the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia; the crystallization of Shi'ism and changing notions of religious authority; and the impact of Turkish migrations and Mongol conquests. They will become familiar with major genres of pre-modern Middle Eastern literary, religious, and scientific writings, and use techniques of close reading to answer questions about those texts' ideological positions and contexts.

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Course Schedule