Shireen Hamza
Biographic Data
| ID | 3867767 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shireen Hamza |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shireen |
| FAMILY NAME | Hamza |
| SIGNATURE | HAMZA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University Press |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-2350-1375 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Surfacing Stones, Clearing Airs
How can premodern medicine enable dancers to harness, reflect on, and subvert their own experiences as patients? Beginning with this question, twelve community dance workshops were facilitated in Chicago, Oberlin, Boston, and Los Angeles, USA, from 2022–2023. First, a series of scores, or loose instructions, were composed for movement drawing on historical research on medicine in the medieval Islamic world. These scores were offered to dancers in…
A Sea of Sorcery
Transformation
Tajriba
To investigate the role of tajriba , or experiential knowledge, in the Islamic world, scholars have turned to philosophically oriented Arabic texts engaged in theorizing knowledge. Few scholars have studied medical texts bearing traces of practice, like case histories and marginalia. And fewer still acknowledge the ongoing lives of tajriba in a medical tradition known as Unani medicine in South Asia. However, the work of ethnographers and practit…
Sexual Knowledge in the Islamic World
The history of sexuality often surprises modern readers, who may presume that premodern people were more restrained in their talk about, and practices of, sex.In the wake of the War on Terror, Muslims have been portrayed as uniquely conservative and patriarchal.Anglophone media regularly produces articles about the surprising "sex positivity" of the medieval Islamic world-wondering what went wrong.Modern writers have drawn a range of conclusions …
Vernacular Languages and Invisible Labor in Ṭibb
Glossaries providing the names of materia medica across languages are ubiquitous in medical manuscripts composed in the Islamic world. These anonymous medical glossaries were produced by physicians who sought out regional names for materia medica from nonliterate people, verifying them for local use in a process called taḥqīq. In early modern South Asia, glossary entries were Arabic or Persian terms, while translations were offered in Persian, Hi…
A Hakim’s Tale
In the fourteenth century, the physician Shihāb al-Dīn Nāgaurī added an autobiographical chapter to the end of a medical text, describing his experiences learning and practicing medicine in India. Because this text is not easily accessible, especially when compared to autobiographies of physicians written in Arabic, I present the Persian text and translation of this chapter here. It is the final chapter of Cure of Illness ( Shifāʾ al-maraẓ ), com…
Race and Science in Global Histories
This book review examines how historians of science have defined knowledge production, as well as its protagonists and settings, in ways that both reject and reproduce the racialization of bodies and cultures in the early modern Caribbean. Recent scholarship in the history of science has furthered our understanding of the history of scientific racism, including the role of theories of biological difference in processes of slavery and colonization…
Medicine Beyond Doctors
Medicine Beyond Doctors
Race and Science in Global Histories
This book review examines how historians of science have defined knowledge production, as well as its protagonists and settings, in ways that both reject and reproduce the racialization of bodies and cultures in the early modern Caribbean. Recent scholarship in the history of science has furthered our understanding of the history of scientific racism, including the role of theories of biological difference in processes of slavery and colonization…
A Hakim’s Tale
In the fourteenth century, the physician Shihāb al-Dīn Nāgaurī added an autobiographical chapter to the end of a medical text, describing his experiences learning and practicing medicine in India. Because this text is not easily accessible, especially when compared to autobiographies of physicians written in Arabic, I present the Persian text and translation of this chapter here. It is the final chapter of Cure of Illness ( Shifāʾ al-maraẓ ), com…
Vernacular Languages and Invisible Labor in Ṭibb
Glossaries providing the names of materia medica across languages are ubiquitous in medical manuscripts composed in the Islamic world. These anonymous medical glossaries were produced by physicians who sought out regional names for materia medica from nonliterate people, verifying them for local use in a process called taḥqīq. In early modern South Asia, glossary entries were Arabic or Persian terms, while translations were offered in Persian, Hi…
Sexual Knowledge in the Islamic World
The history of sexuality often surprises modern readers, who may presume that premodern people were more restrained in their talk about, and practices of, sex.In the wake of the War on Terror, Muslims have been portrayed as uniquely conservative and patriarchal.Anglophone media regularly produces articles about the surprising "sex positivity" of the medieval Islamic world-wondering what went wrong.Modern writers have drawn a range of conclusions …
Surfacing Stones, Clearing Airs
How can premodern medicine enable dancers to harness, reflect on, and subvert their own experiences as patients? Beginning with this question, twelve community dance workshops were facilitated in Chicago, Oberlin, Boston, and Los Angeles, USA, from 2022–2023. First, a series of scores, or loose instructions, were composed for movement drawing on historical research on medicine in the medieval Islamic world. These scores were offered to dancers in…
A Sea of Sorcery
Transformation
Tajriba
To investigate the role of tajriba , or experiential knowledge, in the Islamic world, scholars have turned to philosophically oriented Arabic texts engaged in theorizing knowledge. Few scholars have studied medical texts bearing traces of practice, like case histories and marginalia. And fewer still acknowledge the ongoing lives of tajriba in a medical tradition known as Unani medicine in South Asia. However, the work of ethnographers and practit…
History (4 works) · Islam (4 works) · Islamic Studies and History (4 works) · Art (3 works) · History of Medicine Studies (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Arabic (2 works) · Archaeology (2 works) · Law (2 works)