Academic Bio
Alexandra Hoffmann is a PhD candidate in Persian Language & Literature at the University of Chicago, where she specializes in Classical Persian Literature. She is working on her dissertation project entitled “Strong Warriors and Liminal Lovers: Male bodies and Masculinities in Pre-modern Persian Literature”, which brings together literary texts like the Shāhnāmeh, Kūshnāmeh, ʿAlīnāmeh, Laylī o Majnūn and Nal o Daman, to critically engage with corporeality and masculinities from the 10-16th centuries CE.
Her research has been supported by a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago, a Dissertation write-up Fellowship from the Committee of Southern Asian Studies, a Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion Junior Fellowship, as well as an Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies.
Alexandra Hoffmann holds an MA in Islamic Studies from the University of Zürich, Switzerland.
Her publications include:
"Erinnerungen an eine fremde Heimat. Mahšīd Amīršāhīs Roman Dar Ḥażar und seine Rezeption als kollektiver Text." Asiatische Studien 66:3, 2012, 599-652.
"Angry Men: On Emotions and Masculinities in Samarqandī’s Sindbād-nāmeh." Narrative Culture 7:2 (2020), 145-164.
"Cats and Dogs, Manliness and Misogyny: On the Sindbād-nāma as World Literature." Persianate Literatures as World Literatures, edited by Mostafa Abedinifard, Amirhossein Vafa and Omid Azadibougar (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), 137-152.