DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  Middle Eastern and North African History; Asian History

Thematic Field(s):  History of Science, Technology, and Medicine; Gender and Sexuality History

Principal Research Interest(s):  History of Medicine and the Body

Shireen Hamza obtained her PhD from Harvard's Department of the History of Science in May 2023, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. She produces works in sound, movement, and other artistic media, alongside and in conversation with her scholarly publications. Shireen's work lives on the shores of the history of medicine, Islamic Studies, Indian Ocean History, and the history of sexuality. At Northwestern, they will be working on a book, Environment & Medicine in Medieval Islam, which draws on Arabic and Persian medical manuscripts from across the western Indian Ocean world to investigate the role of place and locality in knowledge production. Shireen will also begin work on her second book project about sound in medieval Islamic cities, interrogating the ways filmmakers in and beyond these regions have imagined their soundscapes in the last century.

Courses Taught

Podcasting the History of Science (Fall 2023); Histories of Asian Medicines (Spring 2024)