Academic Bio
Chad Mowbray is a PhD student in classical Arabic literature studying under Tahera Qutbuddin. He is interested in the impact of Indian literature (Sanskrit and Pali) on the medieval Islamicate tradition—often through Pahlavi and/or Syriac, then on into Europe via Arabic. The exemplary case for this is the Pancatantra/Kalila wa Dimna/Directorium Humanae Vitae.
More generally, his interests center on poetry, especially from structural, linguistic, and cognitive perspectives.
He wrote an MA Thesis (Princeton 2015, under Andras Hamori) on the diwan of Ahlam al-Nasr, an apparently female poet affiliated with the Islamic State.
He also writes essays and poetry pseudonymously, while sitting between two ferns—a subtle metaphor for the narrow range of permissible thought in academia at the moment. Some of his music can be found here: https://evilhasatwin.bandcamp.com