Leyla Rouhi

Photo of Leyla Rouhi

Chair and Mary A. and William Wirt Warren Professor of Romance Languages

413-597-3485
Hollander Hall Rm 313
At Williams since 1993

Education

B.A. Oxford University
M.A. Harvard University
Ph.D. Harvard University, Romance Languages

Areas of Expertise

  • Cultural and Intellectual Exchange between Islam and the West in the European Middle Ages
  • Miguel de Cervantes and Islam
  • Lope de Vega and the material culture of 17th-century Spain
  • Persian Cultural Studies
  • Medieval and Early Modern Iberia
  • Proxenetism and profane love in medieval and early modern European and Islamicate cultures

Courses

RLSP 211 LEC

A Survey of Spanish Literature from the 11th to the 17th Centuries (not offered 2023/24)

RLSP 303 SEM

Cervantes' "Don Quijote" (not offered 2023/24)

RLSP 322 / ARAB 322 SEM

Islam in Spain (not offered 2023/24)

RLSP 366 SEM

The Exemplary Fiction of Miguel de Cervantes (not offered 2023/24)

RLSP 403 SEM

Senior Seminar: Early Modern Love and Marriage (not offered 2023/24)

Scholarship/Creative Work

Founding editor, with Irene Mizrahi and Sonia Pérez Villanueva, ConSecuencias: A Journal of Spanish Criticism. http://consecuenciasspanishjournal.com/

Forthcoming:

edited with Alireza Korangy,  The Other Martyrs: Women and the Poetics of Sexuality, Sacrifice, and Death (Otto Harrassowitz Verlag Press, 2018).

with Julie A. Cassiday, “La heroíca alcahueta dormía la siesta: La Celestina’s Presence in La Regenta” forthcoming in Decimonónica 16.1 (2019).

“Going Between Spaces in La Celestina and El libro de buen amor,” (Brill, volume co-edited by Felipe Rojas and Peter Thompson)

“Las traducciones de Don Quijote en persa,” in Irán-Mundo Hispánico (SILEX ediciones, 2019).

with Julie A. Cassiday, “Persian Cargo on a Russian Ark: The Role of Iran in Sokurov’s Russian Ark” International Journal of Persian Literature vol 2, No 1, (2017) 63-93.

“Lope de Vega and the Meanings of Book Ownership” Hipógrifo 4.1, (2016)  255-269

“The Shadow of Islam in Cervantes,” in The Persistence of Philology: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, ed. Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Karla Mallette (University of Toronto Press, 2014).

“Vassar’s Culinary Ambassador, Penleope Casas,” Vassar Alumnae/i Quarterly, Volume 109 Issue 2 (2013)

El anacronópete, by Enrique Gaspar (translated with Michael Cooperson) (January, 2012).

Don Quixote in Persian,” Motarjem magazine, Teheran 2011.

“Miguel de Cervantes, Early Modern Spain, and the Challenges to the Meaning of Islam,” in Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Volume 4, Number 1, (2011) pp. 7-22.

“My Father, Amir-Hossein Rouhi,” in Payab Magazine, Teheran, June 2011 (in Persian).

“La literatura persa a través de los mss de la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano,” in Las artes del libro oriental. Manuscritos en árabe, armenio, hebreo y persa en la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano. Armen Tokatlian, María Jesús Viguera Molins y Juan Antonio Yeves Andrés, edit. Madrid: Ed. Lázaro Galdiano, 2010.

“A Handsome Boy Among those Barbarous Turks: Cervantes and the Art and Science of Desire,” in Islamicate Sexualities, ed. Najmabadi and Babayan (Harvard, 2008).

“Reading Cervantes in a Time of War,” in In the Light of Medieval Spain, ed Coleman and Doubleday (Palgrave, 2008).

“The Representation of Gender in Pre-modern Persian and Arabic Literature,” Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures in Islam, Brill (ongoing series).

Special edition of Medieval Encounters 12.3 (December 2006), coedited with María J. Feliciano and Cynthia Robinson.

Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, co-edited with Cynthia Robinson, (Brill, 2004). Intrioduction (co-authored with Cynthia Robinson) and chapter on Juan de Segovia’s Study of Islam (“A Fifteenth-Century Salamancan’s Pursuit of Islamic Studies.”

Mediation And Love: A Study of the Medieval Go-Between in Key Romance and Near-Eastern Texts. (Leiden, 1999)

“Trotaconventos and the Dynamics of Dialectical Reasoning.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 1, 1999.

“From Nevski Prospect to Zoia’s Apartment: Trials of a Russian Procuress.” (Co-author, with Julie A. Cassiday) Russian Review 58, 3 (1999).

“A Definition of Medieval Woman’s Work.” Celestinesca, 22 (ii) 1998.

Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature, Greenwood Press: Three entries on medieval topics. (1997)

Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature (two entries on Medieval Iberia).

Translator, with Deborah Jensen, “Interview with Hélène Cixous,” in Shifting Scenes: Interviews on Women. Writing and Politics in Post-68 France, edited by Alice Jardine and Anne Menke (Columbia University Press, 1991) 32-51.

Numerous reviews on Persian, French, Spanish, and Arabic literature and culture.

Awards, Fellowships & Grants

Professor of the Year 2010 for Massachusetts:

http://www.usprofessorsoftheyear.org/Winners/Leyla_Rouhi.html#.Uae2u2TEozQ

Current Committees

  • Faculty Interview Panel