Jane Mikkelson

I am an Assistant Professor of the Humanities, specializing in the literary and intellectual cultures of South Asia and the Near East. I work primarily with classical Persian, and also with Urdu and Arabic; newer projects include Russian and English as well. My research focuses on forms of thought, methods of inquiry, and varieties of experience that are made possible by imaginative literature. Recent publications discuss planetary poetics; the Arabic concept of taste (dhawq) and seventeenth-century English thought; a geopolitical turn in Persian literary criticism; and the ambient availability of Avicenna’s philosophy for Persian poets. My current book project investigates how poetry shaped new kinds of inquiry across disciplines in the early modern Persianate world. Other ongoing projects, both individual and co-authored, aim to bridge the studies of South Asian, Near Eastern, and European cultures through comparison and collaboration. My CV and publications can be found here.