Congratulations to Assistant Professor Shaj Mathew on the release of his first book, The Dialectic of Cosmopolitan Time (Oxford, 2025). The book frames cross-cultural theory through time rather than space and furthers our understanding of global modernism by examining Middle Eastern literature, cinema, and museums.
Professor Mathew's scholarship looks to modern and contemporary Persian and Turkish literature, with a special interest in the antiquity of these expressions of modernity. His second book project studies the influence of ancient Indian philosophy on global modernist literature. Excerpts of these book projects, in addition to translations and articles, appear in PMLA, MLQ, Modernism/modernity, Philosophy and Literature, the ACLA State of the Discipline Report, and New Literary History, the latter of which awarded him the 2020 Ralph Cohen Prize. He occasionally contributes to The Nation, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.
