HUSS Open Forum

Join us for a talk by Maurice Pomerantz, professor at New York University Abu Dhabi and a leading expert on Abbasid literature. Pomerantz will share insights from his award-winning research and recent publications, exploring the literary and intellectual traditions of the Abbasid and early Mamluk periods, as well as his ongoing work on classical Arabic texts.

Maurice Pomerantz (PhD University of Chicago, 2010) is Professor of Literature and Arab Crossroads and Executive Director of the NYUAD Institute at New York University Abu Dhabi where he has taught since 2013. He is a noted expert in the literature of the Abbasid period. He has published two books, Licit Magic: The Life and Letters of al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (2017) and with Bilal Orfali, The Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī: Authorship, Texts, and Contexts (2022). He is currently finishing with Bilial Orfali another co-authored work on the letters of Hamadhānī and their relationship with the Maqāmāt and preparing the editio princeps of al-Maqāmāt al-Jalāliyya, a work of 30 tales which sheds new light on the literary and intellectual culture of the early Mamluk period. He is editor of The Library of Arabic Literature, published by NYU Press.