Jeannie Miller

My first book, The Quibbler: Al-Jahiz’s Equivocations in Kitab al-Hayawan and Beyond (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming) is a study of the Arabic writings of al-Jahiz, a foundational 9^th-century author. It analyzes al-Jahiz’s literary style and unique voice as a performative demonstration of good thinking, according to his definition.

I am currently working on several interconnected studies of the reception and afterlife of Abbasid texts in premodern Islamicate contexts, using manuscripts as evidence. How were these texts read before the modernizing movements of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and the advent of a modern notion of “literature”? One of these is the SSHRC-funded project (2018-2021), Transmission History of al-Jahiz’s Book of Animals, producing a rich narrative history of how this particular text was transmitted and interpreted, up through the Ottoman era. This has led me to begun re-editing a portion of the text.

I am also part of the SSHRC-funded Practices of Commentary project to develop a scholarly network studying global practices of commentary.  My contributions will involve commentaries on canonical texts in the adab tradition (Arabic belles-letters).