Giordani, Angela

Office Hours

Fall 2024: Thursdays, 12:05 - 1:55 PM and by appointment.

Education

BA, University of Texas at Austin, 2010
MPhil Columbia University, 2015
PhD Columbia University, 2021

Interests and Research

I am a historian of the modern Arab world and broader Middle East with interests in intellectual, cultural, and political history; Islamic thought and revivalism; the Arab revolutionary tradition; reception and translation studies; and the global humanities. My present research focuses on the reception-cum-revival of the classical Islamic intellectual heritage in the modern Arab world, a phenomenon I study in dialogue with transdisciplinary debates on the circulation and impact of non-Western thought traditions in modernity. To this end, my first book (in progress) examines the modern history of classical Islamic philosophy, showing how twentieth-century Arab scholars creatively reclaimed and popularized the tradition as a source for regenerating thought and education in the wake of colonization. I am also in the beginning stages of a second book project about concepts of revolution in contemporary Arab thought and politics, which I consider through the massive literature produced in Arabic since the early twentieth century on revolution in Islamic history.

Prior to lecturing at Columbia, I taught modern Middle East History at Smith College and Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Texas.

Selected Publications

Courses

Contemporary Civilization I and II

History of the Modern Middle East (coordinating production of this class as an open-access online course)