Jocelyn Sharlet

Education and Degree(s)

• Ph.D., Near Eastern Studies (Arabic and Persian), Princeton University
• A.B., Near Eastern Studies (Arabic) with honors, Princeton University

Profile

My work investigates the way pre-modern poets and writers create and explore ideas about evolving values and literary and social change in poetry and prose.  I am especially interested in how poets and writers portray and interpret the experiences of patronage and professions, friendship and leisure, family, slavery, conflict, erotic love, and loss using innovative approaches to literary conventions of diverse literary genres. My first monograph examines patronage relationships in the lyric genre of the qasida, typically a polythematic poem of about 20-80 verses, in the thematic genre of praise by the Arabic poets Abu Tammam and al-Buhturi and the Persian poets ʿUnsuri and Farrukhi, and in related anecdotes, anthologies, biographies, encyclopedias, epistles, and literary criticism. I argue that the way poets and writers engage with the possibilities of fulfillment and risk is crucial to understanding the literary depiction of the texture and flexibility of patronage relationships. My current book project, which is under contract, examines the literary context of friendship in the lyric genre of the qitʿa, usually a monothematic poem of about 3-30 verses, in several thematic genres about leisure by the Arabic poets al-Sanawbari, Kushajim, al-Sari al-Raffaʾ, and the Khalidi brothers, and in a related commentary and several anthologies that these poets wrote.

Selected Publications

Book

• Patronage and Poetry in the Islamic World: Social Mobility and Status in the Medieval Middle East and Central Asia (I.B. Tauris, 2011). Honourable Mention, British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize, 2012.

Edited Volume

• Tradition and Reception in Arabic Literature: Essays dedicated to Andras Hamori, ed. Margaret Larkin and Jocelyn Sharlet (Harrassowitz, 2019).

Translation

• Shahrnush Parsipur, Women without Men (a novella), translated from the Persian with Kamran Talattof (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1998 and New York: The Feminist Press, 2004; fourth printing 2009).

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Al-Sari al-Raffaʾ’s Invitations to Delight” (translation and commentary) in Sensory History of the Islamic World: A Primary Source Reader, ed. A. C. Bursi and C. R. Lange, Brill Handbook of Oriental Studies: Section 1, The Near and Middle East 2024
• “Abu Nuwas: Poet of Wine, Desire, the Hunt, and the Abbasid Empire” in A Companion to World Literature Volume 2 601-1450 ed. Ken Seignurie and Christine Chism, Wiley, 2020
• "Earnest and Jest from Political Crisis to Marriage Problems: Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur's (Instances of) The Eloquence of Women," Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 4:2, November, 2019.
• “Students, Teachers, Friends, and Colleagues: Poetry Shared by al-Sanawbari and Kushajim” in Tradition and Reception in Arabic Literature: Essays dedicated to Andras Hamori, ed. Margaret Larkin and Jocelyn Sharlet (Harrassowitz, 2019), 35-78.
• "Chaste Lovers, Umayyad Rulers and Abbasid Writers" in Courts and Performance in the Pre-modern Middle East, ed. Maurice Pomerantz and Evelyn Birge Vitz (NYU Press, 2017), 215-241.
• "Educated Slave Women and Gift Culture" in Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History, ed. Matthew Gordon and Kathryn Hain (Oxford University Press, 2016), 278-298.
• “Arabic Praise Poems” in Oxford Bibliographies in Islamic Studies, online 2016.
• “Her şey kimi tanıdığınızla ilişkilidir: ʿAbbasī edebiyatında yaratıcı yazarlık ve konuşma özgürlüğü” (It’s all about who you know: Creative Writing and Freedom of Speech in Abbasid Literature) in Eski Metinlere Yeni Baglamlar (New Contexts for Old Texts), ed. Selim Kuru, Hatice Aynur, Hanife Koncu, and Mujgan Cakir (Istanbul 2015), 190-217.
• "Hâmîlerve başka bağlılıklar: el-Sanevberî, Küşacim ve Ehl-i Beyt için yazdıkları kasîdeler" (Patrons and Other Commitments in Kasides by al-Sanawbari and Kushajim for the Family of the Prophet Muhammad, tr. to Turkish by Michael Douglas Sheridan) in Kasideye Medhiye (In Praise of the Qasida), ed. Hatice Aynur, Mujgan Cakir, Hanife Koncu, Selim Kuru and Ali Emre Ozyildirim (Istanbul 2013), 44-75.
• "The Thought That Counts in Gift Exchange Poetry by Kushājim, al-Ṣanawbarī, and al-Sarī al-Raffāʾ" Middle Eastern Literatures vol. 14 no. 3 (December 2011), 235-270.

Teaching Experience

• COM 166 Literature of the Modern Middle East
• COM 155 Classical Literature of the Islamic World
• Arabic 121-123 Advanced Arabic
• COM 145 Representations of the City in Literature
• COM 148 Mystical Literature of South Asia and the Middle East
• COM 172/MSA 121C/ARB 140 A Story for a Life: The Arabian Nights
• COM 175/MSA 121A Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings
• COM 195: Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature
• COM 297 Graduate reading courses on Arabic or Persian literature
• COM 210 Graduate Seminars:
  • Cosmopolitanism
  • The Imagination and the Supernatural
  • Creation and Creativity

Honors and Awards

• UC Davis Humanities Institute (proverbs in poetry)
• Scientific Research Council in Turkey for research in Istanbul
• UC Davis Humanities Institute (patrons and sponsors)
• UC Davis Middle East/South Asia Studies for new courses and travel to Iran
• American Research Center in Cairo
• American Institute of Iranian Studies (declined)
• Fulbright for study and research in Damascus
• Mellon for study in Tehran
• Center for Arabic Study Abroad for study in Cairo