Middle East Institute Announces New Director

The Middle East Institute is pleased to announce Mana Kia as the new Director.

She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies. Her interests include the connected social, cultural, intellectual histories of early modern West, Central, and South Asia. Inspired by decolonial thought, feminist historiography, and critical philology, her work engages with ideas and practices of Persianate adab (proper aesthetic and ethical form) as both historical subject and analytic method. She is the author of Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin before Nationalism (Stanford, 2020). Currently, she is working on a second book, which outlines how a shared sense of aesthetic and ethical form (adab as culture) was socially and politically enacted in the transregional circulation of people, texts, practices, and ideas across Persianate Asia. For more about her work and teaching, see her faculty page.