Shireen Hamza

Shireen Hamza

Science in Human Culture Postdoctoral Fellowship, Northwestern University, 2023-2025
Hamza Photo

Research Interests: History of medicine; history of mathematics; history of sexuality; Islamic Studies; Indian Ocean History; South Asian Studies; Middle East Studies.

Shireen Hamza is interested in the history of science and medicine beyond the modern West. Her dissertation is a study of how Muslims made a transregional tradition of medicine (ṭibb) address their local concerns across the medieval Indian Ocean world. She has also published on the history of gender and sexuality. Her work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council.

For her secondary field in Critical Media Practice, she has explored her scholarly interests through sound, moving image, and movement research. This year, she is hosting a workshop series for people to explore the history of medicine through movement, whether they have a background in dance or not. (Contact Shireen for more details.) She is a managing editor for the Ottoman History Podcast, and wrote and produced Ventricles, a podcast on science outside the West.

Publications:

“Between Sexes in Islam,” in Sex, Sexuality, and Sexual Diversity in Islamic Thought and Praxis ed. Omid Safi and Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Duke University Press, forthcoming

"Vernacular Languages and Invisible Labor in Ṭibb." Osiris 37, no. 1 (2022): 115-138.

"A Hakim’s Tale: A Physician’s Reflections from Medieval India." Asian Medicine 15, no. 1 (2020): 63-82.

Recent Presentations:

“Medicine and Masculinity in the Medieval Indian Ocean World,” Middle East Studies Association (December 3rd, 2021)

“Look Hard at the Edges,” History of Science Society (November 20th, 2021)

“Revelation in the History of Medicine,” Annual Conference on South Asia, STM in South Asia Symposium (October 21st, 2021)

Teaching:

“Classifying Sciences through the Ages,” with the Prison+Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, Statesville Correctional Center, Fall 2022

Previous Degrees:


BA., English, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Contact Information