Biography

I was born in Tehran, Iran, and later immigrated to Canada where I received my BA at the University of Toronto in Classics and English. I then moved to California to pursue a PhD in Classics at Stanford University. Afterwards, I headed back east and spent the first three years of my career as a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton Society of Fellows before joining the Haverford Faculty in 2020.

Research and Teaching

In my teaching and research, I build towards a practice of “Classics” in the broadest sense: I combine words with things, merge the subbranches of philology, philosophy and material cultural, and use a variety of both scholarly and creative methods to recover and reevaluate the historic and contemporary significance of antiquity.

The broad question underlying my work is how language can capture and revive the non-verbal moments and experiences of the premodern world (the sights, the sounds, the work, the labor, and the overall somatic and sensory experiences of the everyday). My projects and courses actively engage with cultural, visual, and media studies and address topics such as art and craftsmanship, the transmission and translation of performance, and the theoretical and technological instantiations of the self and identity.

My holistic approach to antiquity is best reflected in my current book project, “The Mirror and the Senses: Reflection and Perception in Classical Greek Thought”. Working across a wide array of materials, from poetry, philosophy, and technical treatises, to actual bronze mirrors, painting, and iconography, as well as practices of beautification and ritual, the book argues for an in extricable link between the materiality of Greek mirrors and the transformative intellectual work on vision and sensation at the time. I have also published and am preparing forthcoming work on issues of materiality and affect, cognition and the senses, painting and character, and labor and craftsmanship in Greek drama, philosophy, and the non-canonical prose of the fourth-century.

Both inside and outside of the academy, I have been active in theater (directing, producing, and stage managing various ancient and modern dramas) as well as writing for film. These and various other creative endeavors play a major role in my work, especially my teaching.