Rebecca Ruth Gould is a writer, translator, and Professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at the
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingha ...
.
Her academic interests are the
Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (country), Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range ...
, Comparative Literature, Islam, Islamic Law, Islamic Studies, Persian literature, Poetics and Poetry.
Her PhD dissertation focused on Persian prison poetry, and was published in revised form as ''The Persian Prison Poem: Sovereignty and the Political Imagination (2021)''.
Her articles have received awards from
English PEN
Founded in 1921, English PEN is one of the world's first non-governmental organisations and among the first international bodies advocating for human rights. English PEN was the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' associat ...
, the International Society for Intellectual History’s Charles Schmitt Prize,
the
Modern Language Association’s Florence Howe Award for Feminist Scholarship,
and the
British Association for American Studies’ Arthur Miller Centre Essay Prize.
Gould's work also deals with legal theory and the theory of racism, and she has become an influential critic of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's
Working Definition of Antisemitism.
Career
Gould was born and educated in the United States.
Gould received her BA in Comparative Literature and Slavic Studies from the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
.
After working in publishing for a few years, Gould moved to
Tbilisi
Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million p ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
in 2004, where she learned
Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
and started to learn
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
.
Having lived for two years in Tbilisi, she returned to the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
where she started her PhD at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Department for Middle East, South Asian, & African Studies.
Gould has conducted fieldwork and research in numerous countries and regions, including
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, Georgia, Syria,
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...
,
Chechnya,
Ingushetia,
Dagestan, India, Egypt, Palestine and Tajikistan.
In addition to the University of Birmingham, she has taught at Columbia University,
Yale-NUS College
Yale-NUS College is a liberal arts college in Singapore. Established in 2011 as a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore, it was the first liberal arts college in Singapore and one of the first few in Asia. ...
in Singapore, and the
University of Bristol
, mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'')
, established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter
, type ...
.
She has also been an associate at the
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies The following is a list of academic research centers devoted to Russian studies, or Slavic studies, encompassing the area of the former Soviet Union, sometimes referred to as Eurasia:
# Arizona State University The Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasi ...
at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
.
The literatures Gould has published on include Persian (classical and modern), Georgian (modern and early modern), Russian, Arabic (classical and modern), and American (Thoreau, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Edith Wharton). Her work has been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Polish, and Portuguese. She is director of the
European Research Council-funded project
Global Literary Theory and has also received funding from the British Academy, the British Library, the British Council, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. She has held external fellowships with the
Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (VLJI) is a center for the interdisciplinary study and discussion of issues related to philosophy, society, culture, and education. The Institute was established in to create a body of knowledge and discourseto ...
,
Central European University
Central European University (CEU) is a private research university accredited in Austria, Hungary, and the United States, with campuses in Vienna and Budapest. The university is known for its highly intensive programs in the social science ...
’s Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Forum for Transregional Studies (Berlin).
Scholarship
Gould's first book was'' Writers and Rebels: The Literatures of Insurgency in the Caucasus'' (Yale University Press, 2016), which was awarded the University of Southern California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies and the best book award by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies.
Norihiro Naganawa has described ''Writers and Rebels'' as "an astonishing book mediating between spheres that scholars have otherwise explored separately."
Mary Childs has written that Gould's "interdisciplinary approach is essential to a more nuanced understanding of the cultures—Chechen and Daghestani, in particular—that tend to get tossed into a single Caucasus basket."
Creative work
Gould is also a poet, short story, and creative nonfiction writer. Her first poetry collection ''Cityscapes'' (2019) was followed by the chapbook ''Beautiful English'' (2021). Her essay “Watching Chekhov in Tehran” was runner-up for the Beechmore Books Arts Journalism Competition in 2020.
Her poetry and translations have been nominated three times for the
Pushcart Prize.
Translations
Gould translates from Persian, Georgian, and Russian. Her translations include ''The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and other stories by
Vazha-Pshavela
Vazha-Pshavela ( ka, ვაჟა-ფშაველა), simply referred to as Vazha ( ka, ვაჟა) (26 July 1861 – 10 July 1915), is the pen name of the Georgian poet and writer Luka Razikashvili ( ka, ლუკა რაზიკა ...
''(2019), ''After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi '' (2016), and'' Prose of the Mountains: Tales of the Caucasus ''(2015). Her most recently translations with Iranian poet and scholar Kayvan Tahmasebian include ''High Tide of the Eyes: Poems by
Bijan Elahi ''(2019) and ''House Arrest: Poems of
Hasan Alizadeh '' (2022), was awarded a PEN Translates Award from English PEN. Gould is also co-editor with Tahmasebian of the ''Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism ''(2020).
Selected publications
A fraction of Gould's works:
Books
* ''Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom'' (London and New York: Verso Books, 2023)
* ''Persian Prison Poem: Sovereignty and the Political Imagination'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021)
* ''Writers and Rebels: The Literature of Insurgency in the Caucasus'' (Yale University Press, 2016).
* '' Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism'', co-editor with Kayvan Tahmasebian (2020)
Articles
* ''Enchanting Literary Modernity: Idris Bazorkin’s Postcolonial Soviet Pastoral'', Modern Language Review 15(2): 405-428 (2020)
* ''The Persianate Cosmology of Historical Inquiry in the Caucasus: ʿAbbās Qulī Āghā Bākīkhānūf’s Cosmological Cosmopolitanism'', Comparative Literature 71(3): 272-297. (2019)
* ''Memorializing Akhundzadeh: Contradictory Cosmopolitanism and Post-Soviet Narcissism in Old Tbilisi'', Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 20(4): 488-509. (2018)
* (co-authored with Shamil Shikhaliev), ''Beyond the Taqlīd/Ijtihād Dichotomy: Daghestani Legal Thought under Russian Rule'', Islamic Law and Society 24(1-2): 142-169. (2017)
* ''The Persian Translation of Arabic Aesthetics: Rādūyānī’s Rhetorical Renaissance'', Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 33(4): 339-371. (2016)
* ''The Critique of Religion as Political Critique: Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda’s Pre-Islamic Xenology'', Intellectual History Review 26(2): 171-184. (2016)
* ''Ijtihād against Madhhab: Legal Hybridity and the Meanings of Modernity in Early Modern Daghestan'', Comparative Studies in Society and History 57(1): 35-66 (2015).
* ''The Geographies of ʿAjam: The Circulation of Persian Poetry from South Asia to the Caucasus'', The Medieval History Journal 18(1): 87-119. (2015).
* ''Why Daghestan is Good to Think: Moshe Gammer, Daghestan, and Global Islamic History'', in Written Culture in Daghestan, ed. Moshe Gammer (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, 2015), 17-40.
* ''The Lonely Hero and Chechen Modernity: Interpreting the Story of Gekha the Abrek'', Journal of Folklore Research 51(2): 199-222. (2014)
* ''Aleksandre Qazbegi’s Mountaineer Prosaics: The Anticolonial Vernacular on Georgian-Chechen Borderlands'', Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History in the Post-Soviet Space 15 (1): 361-390. (2014)
* ''The Death of Caucasus Philology: Towards a Discipline Beyond Areal Divides'', Iran and the Caucasus 17(3): 275-293 (2013)
* ''The Modernity of Premodern Islam in Contemporary Daghestan'', Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life 5(2): 161-183. (2011)
* ''Secularism and Belief in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge'', Journal of Islamic Studies 22(3): 339-373 (2011).
Awards
* University of Southern California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies
* Best book award by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies
* International Society for Intellectual History’s Charles Schmitt Prize
* Modern Language Association’s Florence Howe Award for Feminist Scholarship
* British Association for American Studies’ Arthur Miller Centre Essay Prize
* International Society for Intellectual History’s Charles Schmitt Prize
* PEN Translates Award (English PEN)
References
External links
Interview with Gould in The NasionaOfficial Website of Rebecca Ruth Gould
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gould, Rebecca
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
British Islamic studies scholars
Comparative literature academics
Iranologists
Kartvelian studies scholars
Caucasologists
Academics of the University of Birmingham
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Columbia University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Yale University faculty
Academics of the University of Bristol
Harvard University faculty