D Gershon Lewental, PhD—Professional biography

D Gershon Lewental is a cultural historian of the Middle East, focusing on how societies use religion, memory, and conflict to define and maintain their identities. He teaches in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and in the Department of International & Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma (since 2012). He earned his bachelor of arts degree (magna cum laude) from Cornell University and his doctorate in Middle Eastern history from Brandeis University. His dissertation, on the changing perceptions of the Arab-Islamic conquest of Iran through time, received the Foundation of Iranian Studies Best Dissertation Award and the Brandeis University Glatzer Dissertation Prize. His fields of specialisation include early Islamic history and historiography, Iranian history, the Bahaʾi faith, Ottoman Jewry, and Israeli society.

He is preparing two book manuscripts, one on the interplay of religion, nationalism, and memory in the modern Middle East (forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press) and the other on the rôle of narrative in early Islamic historiography. He has published articles on the literary development of Islamic Iranian identity in Iranian Studies (2017), the changing meanings of the pre-Islamic Iranian flag in History & Memory (2024), the use and abuse of religious history by Ṣaddām Ḥusayn in Middle Eastern Studies (2014) and other articles, including a study of radical Islamists’ memory are forthcoming in other journals. He is also the English translator of numerous Hebrew academic works, including Yaron Harel’s Zionism in Damascus (I B Tauris, 2015). Other topics on which he is currently working include a broad study of the Bahaʾi community in Israel from 1917 to the present; and an analysis of the elaboration of Tajiki identity. His broad range of courses include Religion and society in the Middle East, Early Islamic history, Minorities in the Middle East, Pre-modern Iran, History of the Bahaʾi faith, the Modern Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Introduction to Islam, Israeli society, and Global political turbulence.

Table of contents

I am a cultural historian of the Middle East, focusing on how societies use religion, memory, and conflict to define and maintain their identities. In my publications and in my classes, I explore this theme in various chronological and geographical contexts, and the scarlet thread running through my research is an attention to shared heritages and historical continuities, which I find in what appear to be contradictory narratives or unconnected cultures through a comparative and transnational approach.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern StudiesJerusalem, Israel
Adjunct professor March 2023–present

Shalem College, Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic StudiesJerusalem, Israel
Assistant professor February 2017–September 2022

University of Oklahoma, Departments of History and International & Area StudiesNorman, Oklahoma
Visiting assistant professor; adjunct professor (since 2018) August 2012–present

Brandeis University, Lown School of Near Eastern & Judaic Studies Waltham, Massachusetts
PhD, MA, modern Middle Eastern history; 4.0 GPA August 2003–August 2011

Dissertation title: ‘Qādisiyyah, then and now: A Case study of history and memory, religion, and nationalism in Middle Eastern discourse’; committee: Avigdor Levy (chair), Kanan Makiya, David S Powers (Cornell University).
Synopsis: I examined the perceptions of the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah, an engagement during the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iran in the 630s, as they changed already in the first centuries of Islam down to the contemporary Middle East. My thesis included a lengthy study of early Islamic historiography, a deconstruction of the traditional Qādisiyyah narrative, and an investigation of the modern manipulation of its memory with a particular focus on the discourse of Baʿthī Iraq under Ṣaddām Ḥusayn, as well as radical Islamists. My analysis explored the dynamic of religion and nationalism in modern identity, as well as the rôle of memory—such as that of al-Qādisiyyah—in connecting the two. In recognition of this dissertation, I was honoured with the Foundation of Iranian Studies Best Dissertation Award (2012) and the Brandeis University Glatzer Dissertation Prize (2012).

Academy of Sciences of the Rep. of Tajikistan, Inst. of Languages and Literature Dushanbe, Taj.
US Dept of State Critical Language Scholarship—Intensive Persian Summer Institute June–July 2009

University of Wisconsin, Department of Arabic & Persian Languages Madison, Wisconsin
Persian immersion programme June–August 2005

Cornell University, College of Arts & Sciences: Depts of Near Eastern Stds and Economics Ithaca, NY
AB magna cum laude; with distinction and a concentration in Int’l Relat.; Dean’s List Aug. 1999–May 2003

Journal of Persianate Societies Leiden, The Netherlands
Associate editor January 2016–present

E J Brill Academic Press Leiden, The Netherlands
Translation editor and content editor March 2007–present

Freelance translator Tel-Aviv, Israel
Translator from Hebrew into English October 2010–present

For a full and detailed list of my course syllabi, click here. Below, click for syllabus, if available:

Introductory/survey courses

Introduction to the modern Middle East — History of Iran — History of Israel — History of the Ottoman Empire — Introduction to Islam — Introduction to Islamic civilisation — History of the world to 1500

Higher-level courses

Religion and society in the Middle East — Pre-modern Iran — Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Iran — Early Islamic history, 600–1258 — Islamic history, 1258–1798 — Arab-Israeli conflict — Political Islam — History and development of Israeli society — Minorities in the Middle East — Shīʿī Islam — Mediæval Middle Eastern history — History of Central Asia — History of Zionism — Jews and Christians under Islam — Jews of the Ottoman Empire — Israeli culture through film — Ottomans and Ṣafavids — Israeli politics

Seminar/graduate courses

Seminar on the Arab-Muslim conquests — Islamic historiography — Nationalism and identity in the Middle East — History and memory in the Middle East — Constitutional revolutions and movements — Identities and tensions in Israeli society — Millenarianism and Islam

Languages

Bilingual: Hebrew, English. Fluent: Persian, Tajiki. Proficient: (Levantine) Arabic, Russian, French. Qualified: Latin. Elementary: Turkish. Able to read Greek and Urdu scripts.

Computing

Computing skills: Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, HTML, and CSS.

For a full list of my publications, click here.