People

Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies.

HMEI Associated Faculty

Environmental Humanities

Near Eastern Studies

I’m a social historian of the medieval Middle East, interested especially in family life and in how law and religion worked in mundane, everyday settings. My research focuses on urban Jews in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt (969–1250), a population who accidentally left behind some of the most detailed and varied sources about ordinary life to have survived the premodern world: the Cairo Geniza documents, a cache of everyday writings (letters, legal documents, shopping lists, and so on) produced mainly in this period and preserved by chance in a synagogue in Fustat (old Cairo).