Associate Professor of Classical Studies
About
Interests include: Greco-Roman and Islamicate medicine and philosophy; Galen and Galenism, the Second Sophistic, Greco-Arabic translation movement, epitomization, pre-modern and modern concepts of brevity
As an intellectual historian with training in Classics, I am interested in how Greco-Roman and medieval Islamicate authors articulate categories of knowledge such as ‘medicine’, ‘philosophy’, and ‘science’. My current research examines the concept of disciplinarity, especially the ways in which boundaries are drawn between disciplines in contests for epistemic authority. My first monograph, Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato’s Timaeus (Cambridge University Press, Fall 2020), looks at the polemical use of Plato’s cosmological dialogue by the Greek doctor Galen of Pergamum (d. c. 217) to contest philosophy’s exclusive right to define, describe, and explain the different domains of reality. I argue that, in so doing, Galen sets out to establish medicine as a reliable authority on not only the body but also the soul and the wider cosmos. Moreover, this study shows that Galen’s engagement with the Timaeus became a touchstone for Islamicate thinkers’ own disciplinary agendas. My second monograph project (The Art in Brief: Time and Exegesis in Greco-Roman and Islamicate Medicine) looks at the role of brevity in scientific discourse, particularly how Greek and Arabic epitomatory writings claim to compress all of the art of medicine into a few set truths.
Having published a number of articles on Greco-Roman medicine and philosophy and their reception in the pre-modern Middle East, I would be delighted to supervise graduate students interested in working on any facet of the history of medicine, science, and technology from the classical to medieval period.
