Faculty

Adi Mahalel teaches Yiddish Studies. He earned his PhD from Columbia University and is the author of The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism (SUNY Press) and the translation and scholarly introduction of Hanan Ayalti’s Boom and...

Mazalit Haim is a scholar of modern Hebrew literature and Israeli culture. Her research explores the politics of hope and despair in modern Jewish and Israeli literature, visual art, museums, and public culture. Drawing on affect theory, psychoanalysis...

Nalan Erbil’s research focuses on nineteenth-century Ottoman and modern Turkish literature, migration, and Turkish language pedagogy. Her current project theorizes an Ottoman and Turkish literary critical-ethical method implicit in the concept and...

Jesse S. Arlen is Lecturer in Armenian Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of many articles and book chapters relating to medieval religious literature and intellectual history, with particular attention to asceticism and mysticism. He is the...

Abdul Manan Bhat is a scholar of Islam, devotional literature, and material religion, specializing in Islamic discourses on poetry with a focus on the Persianate world. Urdu and Persian literature is at the heart of his teaching and research interests. At...

On leave for the 2026-27 academic year.

Research interests: Modern Middle Eastern History (Ottoman and Post-Ottoman); Social and Cultural History; Historical Anthropology; Empire/Law

Mestyan is on sabbatical leave during 2026-27. During this period, he is a...

Peter Der Manuelian is the Barbara Bell Professor of Egyptology and holds a joint appointment in the Anthropology Department and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He is also director of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East...

As a linguist and scholar of Persian language and literature, my work bridges the fields of language teaching and the politics of literary translation. With graduate training from Allameh Tabataba'i, and over a decade of teaching experience at Yale...

Teren Sevea is a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia, and received his PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining HDS, he served as Assistant Professor of South Asia Studies at the...