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About

Matthew Thomas Miller, PhD. is Assistant Professor of Persian Literature and Digital Humanities at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also serves as the Associate Director of the Roshan Initiative in Persian Digital Humanities (PersDig@UMD) and as the co-PI for the multi-institutional Open Islamicate Texts Initiative (OpenITI) and the Persian Manuscript Initiative (PMI). His research focuses on medieval Sufi literature, the history of sexuality and the body, and digital humanities. He currently is working on a book project, entitled Embodying the Beloved: Embodiment and Mystical Modes of Meaning Creation in Medieval Persian Sufi Literature, and a number of articles on computational or “distant reading” approaches to Persian literature and carnivalesque Sufi poetry.

Education

2016 PhD, Comparative Literature, Washington University in Saint Louis
2016 Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
2009 MA, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies, Washington University in Saint Louis
2007 BA, International and Area Studies (with University Honors and Phi Beta Kappa), Washington University in Saint Louis

Work Shared in CORE

Articles
Online publication

Other Publications

Academic Publications


  • (with Maxim G. Romanov, Sarah Bowen Savant, and Ben Kiessling). “Important New Developments in Arabographic Optical Character Recognition (OCR).” Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists 25 (2017). Available here: http://islamichistorycommons.org/mem/wp-content/uploads/sites/55/2017/11/UW-25-Savant-et-al.pdf

  • “Embodying the Sufi Beloved: (Homo)eroticism, Embodiment, and the Construction of Desire in the Hagiographic Tradition of ‘Erâqi.” Journal of Middle Eastern Literatures 21:1 (2018).

  • https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743817000964(with Maxim G. Romanov and Sarah Bowen Savant). “Digitizing the Textual Heritage of the Premodern Islamicate World: Principles and Plans.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 50 (2017): 103-109. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743817000964

  • (with Sarah Bowen Savant). “‘Tell Me Something I Don’t Know!’: The Place and Politics of Digital Methods in the (Islamicate) Humanities.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 50 (2017): 135-139. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743817001027

  • “Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Irāqī: Poet and Mystic.” In Religious and Mystical Literature (Volume VI of A History of Persian Literature Series), eds. Fatemeh Keshavarz, Ahmet T. Karamustafa, and Ehsan Yarshater. New York: I.B. Tauris, Forthcoming 2018.


Public Scholarship

  • “The Kite Runner Critiqued: New Orientalism Goes to the Big Screen.” CommonDreams (Jan 2008). Available here. Translated into Persian: “Ravâyati neo-orientâlisti az khâvarmiyâneh: naqdi digar bar ‘Bâdbâdak-bâz’.” Jahân-e Ketâb sâl-e sizdahom, shomâreh-ye 3 va 4 (Khordâd va Tir 1387). Translated by Ahmad Sayf. Available here: http://www.ensani.ir/fa/content/236052/default.aspx

Projects

Associate Director, Roshan Initiative in Persian Digital Humanities (PersDig@UMD)

Co-PI, Open Islamicate Texts Initiative (OpenITI)

Co-PI, Persian Manuscript Initiative (PMI)

Matthew Thomas Miller

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