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PROF Rebecca Gould's Outputs (82)

Memorializing Akhundzadeh: Contradictory Cosmopolitanism and Post-Soviet Narcissism in Old Tbilisi (2018)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2018). Memorializing Akhundzadeh: Contradictory Cosmopolitanism and Post-Soviet Narcissism in Old Tbilisi. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 20(4), 488-509. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2018.1439397

While the cosmopolitan turn in political and literary theory encourages us to move beyond national frameworks, the Caucasus remains mired in ethno-national categories from the Soviet past. This essay examines how these categories are being mobilized... Read More about Memorializing Akhundzadeh: Contradictory Cosmopolitanism and Post-Soviet Narcissism in Old Tbilisi.

Literature as a tribunal: the modern Iranian prose of incarceration (2017)
Journal Article
Ruth Gould, R. (2017). Literature as a tribunal: the modern Iranian prose of incarceration. Prose Studies, 39(1), 19-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/01440357.2017.1394637

This essay examines the development of prison memoirs in modern Iranian prose. It constructs from the prison memoirs of the dissident writers ʿAli Dashti, Bozorg ʿAlavi, and Reza Baraheni a genealogy of the emergence of prison consciousness in Irania... Read More about Literature as a tribunal: the modern Iranian prose of incarceration.

Punishing Violent Thoughts: Islamic Dissent and Thoreauvian Disobedience in Post-9/11 America (2017)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2019). Punishing Violent Thoughts: Islamic Dissent and Thoreauvian Disobedience in Post-9/11 America. Journal of American Studies, 53(1), 146-171. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875817001426

American Muslims increasingly negotiate their relation to a government that is suspicious of Islam, yet which recognizes them as rights-bearing citizens, within a culture they claim as their own. To better understand how the post-9/11 state is reshap... Read More about Punishing Violent Thoughts: Islamic Dissent and Thoreauvian Disobedience in Post-9/11 America.

Beyond the Taqlīd/Ijtihād Dichotomy: Daghestani Legal Thought under Russian Rule (2017)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R., & Shikhaliev, S. (2017). Beyond the Taqlīd/Ijtihād Dichotomy: Daghestani Legal Thought under Russian Rule. Islamic Law and Society, 24(1-2), 142-169. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-02412p06

As one of the first scholarly studies of Jirāb al-Mamnūn, a collection of letters by the Daghestani Shāfiʿī scholar Ḥasan al-Alqadārī (1834–1910), this article challenges the ijtihād/taqlīd dichotomy within Islamic legal thought and argues for a mor... Read More about Beyond the Taqlīd/Ijtihād Dichotomy: Daghestani Legal Thought under Russian Rule.

The Persian translation of Arabic aesthetics: Rādūyān's rhetorical renaissance (2016)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2016). The Persian translation of Arabic aesthetics: Rādūyān's rhetorical renaissance. Rhetorica, 34(4), 339-371. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2016.34.4.339

Notwithstanding its value as the earliest extant New Persian treatment of the art of rhetoric, Rādūyānī's Interpreter of Rhetoric (Tarjumān al-Balāgha) has yet to be read from the vantage point of comparative poetics. Composed in the Ferghana region... Read More about The Persian translation of Arabic aesthetics: Rādūyān's rhetorical renaissance.

Finding Bazorkin in the Caucasus: A Journey from Anthropology to Literature (2016)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2016). Finding Bazorkin in the Caucasus: A Journey from Anthropology to Literature. Anthropology and Humanism, 41(1), 86-101. https://doi.org/10.1111/anhu.12109

This essay chronicles a journey through the Caucasus toward the end of the second Russo-Chechen war. It focuses in particular on the discovery of a little-known Soviet-era work of historical fiction by the Ingush author Idris Bazorkin (1910-1991). In... Read More about Finding Bazorkin in the Caucasus: A Journey from Anthropology to Literature.

Wearing the Belt of Oppression: Khāqāni's Christian Qasida and the Prison Poetry of Medieval Shirvān (2016)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2016). Wearing the Belt of Oppression: Khāqāni's Christian Qasida and the Prison Poetry of Medieval Shirvān. Journal of Persianate Studies, 9(1), 19-44. https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-12341296

This article examines how the Persian prison poem (habsiyāt) incorporated Islamic legal norms for governing non-Muslim peoples into its poetics. By tracing how Khāqāni of Shirvān (d. 1199) brought the aesthetics of incarceration to bear on Islamic le... Read More about Wearing the Belt of Oppression: Khāqāni's Christian Qasida and the Prison Poetry of Medieval Shirvān.

The critique of religion as political critique: Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda's pre-Islamic xenology (2016)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2016). The critique of religion as political critique: Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda's pre-Islamic xenology. Intellectual History Review, 26(2), 171-184. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2016.1144420

Awarded the International Society for Intellectual History’s Charles Schmitt Prize* Mīrzā Fatḥ 'Alī Ākhūndzāda’s Letters from Prince Kamāl al-Dawla to the Prince Jalāl al-Dawla (1865) is often read as a Persian attempt to introduce European Enlighten... Read More about The critique of religion as political critique: Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda's pre-Islamic xenology.

Vested Reading: Writing the Self through Ethan Frome (2016)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2016). Vested Reading: Writing the Self through Ethan Frome. Life Writing, 13(4), 415-430. https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2015.1124742

This essay builds on the work of Wolfgang Iser, Janice Radway, E. H. Gombrich, and other theorists of reading to argue for a new approach to the reading encounter, which I call vested reading. Vested reading is a means of engaging with the literary t... Read More about Vested Reading: Writing the Self through Ethan Frome.

The much-maligned panegyric: Toward a political poetics of premodern literary form (2015)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2015). The much-maligned panegyric: Toward a political poetics of premodern literary form. Comparative Literature Studies, 52(2), 254-288. https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.52.2.0254

This article examines the panegyric across the literary traditions of West, South, and East Asia, concentrating on Arabo-Persian qaṣīda, the Sanskrit praśasti, and the Chinese fu. In radically different albeit analogous ways, these three genres elabo... Read More about The much-maligned panegyric: Toward a political poetics of premodern literary form.

The geographies of 'Ajam: The circulation of Persian poetry from South Asia to the Caucasus (2015)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2015). The geographies of 'Ajam: The circulation of Persian poetry from South Asia to the Caucasus. Medieval History Journal, 18(1), 87-119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945814565729

With the consolidation of Persian literary culture across the eastern Islamic ecumene, Persian poets gained confidence in the power of their craft to shape their world. Alongside other genres, the medieval Persian prison poem (habsīyyāt) strikingly i... Read More about The geographies of 'Ajam: The circulation of Persian poetry from South Asia to the Caucasus.

Ijtiha¯d against Madhhab: Legal hybridity and the meanings of modernity in early modern Daghestan (2015)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2015). Ijtiha¯d against Madhhab: Legal hybridity and the meanings of modernity in early modern Daghestan. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 57(1), 35-66. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417514000590

This article explores the interface of multiple legal systems in early modern Daghestan. By comparing colonial engagements with legal plurality with indigenous genres of Daghestani legal discourse, I aim to shed light on the plurality of legal system... Read More about Ijtiha¯d against Madhhab: Legal hybridity and the meanings of modernity in early modern Daghestan.

Philology’s Contingent Genealogies (2015)
Journal Article
Gould, R. R. (2015). Philology’s Contingent Genealogies. Philology an international journal on the evolution of languages, cultures and texts, 1(1), 53-66. https://doi.org/10.3726/78000_53

Starting from an analysis of “classical” philological (and philosophical) works, the author explains how philology can contribute to the perception of the contingency of human knowledge. The early modern discovery of linguistic contingency was inaugu... Read More about Philology’s Contingent Genealogies.