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Elias Muhanna is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies at Brown University, where he teaches courses on classical Arabic literature and Islamic intellectual history. He earned his PhD in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations from Harvard University, and his dissertation won the Bruce D. Craig Prize from the Mamluk Studies Review in 2012. His article, "The Sultan's New Clothes: Ottoman-Mamluk Gift Exchange in the 15th Century" (Muqarnas) was awarded the 2008 Margaret P. Sevcenko Prize by the Historians of Islamic Art Association, and he is currently completing a book on classical and early modern encyclopedic literature in the Islamic world. The book explores a golden age of Arabic encyclopedic literature that emerged in the scholarly centers of 14th-16th century Egypt and Syria, a period that witnessed the composition of enormous books covering a vast array of subjects, from literature, history, and geography, to law, theology, and exegesis.

In addition to his premodern interests, Professor Muhanna has written on the evolving political cultures of the contemporary Middle East. His blog, Qifa Nabki, is a forum for intellectual exchange and debate on Levantine politics, and he writes regularly for a variety of other publications including The New York Times, The Nation, and Foreign Policy. He has served as an expert consultant on questions of Lebanese political reform, and his 2012 article "Establishing a Lebanese Senate: Bicameralism and the Third Republic" was used as the basis for a proposal on institutional reform in Lebanon in 2013.

For a list of selected publications, see here.

Download Elias Muhanna's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format