Mellon Fellows Seminar - Ahmed al-Rahim, "Mobility and Knowledge in the Mongol Empire"

Fri Nov 15

Ahmed H. al-Rahim works on Arabo-Islamic intellectual and religious history from Muhammad to Avicenna to Abū-Bakr al-Baghdādī. His research and teaching cut across the centuries, spanning the Arabic reception history of Avicennan philosophy during Islam’s so-called “dark ages,” from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the development of Islamic ethics in the Middle Ages, and the ideologies of political Islam, also known as Islamism, in the Middle East in the early nineteenth to twenty-first century. Professor al-Rahim is currently working on a history of etiquette literature and manuals of practical virtue ethics (ādāb) in Islamicate civilization, and on a short introduction to modern Islamist ideologies. His publications include: Islamic Ethics: An Introduction to the Classical Tradition, New Islamic Surveys (Edinburgh University Press, Forthcoming); The Creation of Philosophical Tradition: Biography and the Reception of Avicenna’s Philosophy from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century A.D., Diskurse der Arabistik; XXI (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018); and Before and After Avicenna: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group, co-edited with D.C. Reisman, Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science. Texts and Studies, LII (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003).

Mellon Fellows Seminar - Katelyn Wood, "Listening Backwards: Archiving Laughter and Queer Sonic Intimacies"

Fri Feb 07

Katelyn Hale Wood is a performance studies scholar and theatre historian whose research engages the intersections of critical race and queer theory, gender studies, and 20th/21st century comedic performance. Her first book project, tentatively titled Modalities of Freedom: Black Feminist Comedic Performance in 20th and 21st Century USA, argues how the work of Black feminist stand-up comedians have played vital roles in queer, feminist, and anti-racist community building. Her work has been published in Theatre Topics, QED: A Journal in GLTBQ Worldmaking, and Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and has also been supported by the American Society for Theatre Research and the National Center for Institutional Diversity. 

Wood received her Ph.D. in Theatre History and Criticism with an emphasis in African American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2014). Prior to joining the faculty at UVA, she taught in the Theatre History and Theory program at Miami University. Alongside her scholarship, Wood is also a dramaturge. 

At UVA, Wood teaches courses in theatre history, performance theory, as well as interdisciplinary topics, such as race and performance in the Americas, queer and feminist performance in the U.S., and comedy as protest.