We are delighted to invite you to join us for the 2026 Frank Lewis Memorial Seminar, featuring a student workshop and a public lecture by Dr. Alexander Jabbari.
This year’s seminar will take place over two days:
Workshop
Wednesday, October 7, 2026 | 2:00–4:00 p.m.
Harper Memorial 140
Lecture
Thursday, October 8, 2026 | 4:30–6:30 p.m.
Classics 110
Workshop
The workshop will feature student presentations from Mert Aydemir, Rana Ghuloom, Salimeh Hosseini, and Jeson Ng, followed by a response from Dr. Jabbari.
Lecture
Dr. Alexander Jabbari
What Does Grammar Do? Some Answers from Persian Philology
Abstract:
In this lecture, Alexander Jabbari examines some of the first manuals on Persian grammar alongside lexicons and other early modern Persian philological works. These texts offer insights into the social history of language in the Persianate world: how Persian was taught and learned, how different groups sought to define its use, and how its relationship to Islam was understood.
More broadly, he draws on Persian philology to consider a larger question: What does grammar do? The study of grammar was the basis of a madrasa education, so what forms of sociability, ways of knowing, and ways of being in the world are produced or shaped by such study?
About the Speaker:
Alexander Jabbari is Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on literary history and philology in the Middle East and South Asia, primarily in Persian, Arabic, and Urdu. He is the author of The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India (Cambridge University Press, 2023). For the 2026–2027 academic year, he is an EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin.
We hope you will join us for both events, and we look forward to welcoming you to this year’s Frank Lewis Memorial Seminar!