Office Hours: By appointment
A scholar of religion and literature, specifically premodern Islam, Allison Kanner-Botan joins Religious Studies from the University of Chicago. Kanner-Botan’s investigations grow out of her interest in the role of love in attempts to define humanity. Her dissertation analyzes the construction of gender, rationality, and embodiment in premodern Arabic and Persian renditions of the most famous love-story of the Islamic world, the story of Layla and the madman-poet Majnun. A scholar of the literatures of Islamic societies (Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish), her work focuses broadly on the relationship between aesthetics and social critique. During her fellowship year at CU Boulder, Dr. Kanner-Botan will be working on her first book project, tentatively entitled "Maddening Love: The Ethics of Desire in the Legend of Layla and Majnun." The project expands from her dissertation research by exploring the multilingual reception of the story of Layla and Majnun in early modern Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East. Assistant Professor in Religious Studies Aun Hasan Ali will serve as Kanner-Botan’s mentor.