Bio

Rebecca Ruth Gould is a writer, translator, and scholar specializing in the politics of race and culture, the Middle East (especially Iran) and the former Soviet Union, and in the intersection between the law and the humanities. She has conducted research and written about Palestine, Syria, Iran, Tajikistan, Chechnya, and the Republic of Georgia.

Her books include Writers and Rebels: The Literatures of Insurgency in the Caucasus (Yale University Press, 2016), won the University of Southern California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies prize as well as the prize for Best Book by a Woman by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies, and honorable mentions for the Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies (Association for the Study of Nationalities) and for the Davis Center Book Prize (Harvard University’s Davis Center).

She has translated from Persian, Georgian, and Russian, and is the translator of After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2016), and The Prose of the Mountains: Tales of the Caucasus (Central European University Press, 2015), The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and other Stories by Vazha-Pshavela (London: Paper & Ink), and the co-translator with Kayvan Tahmasebian of High Tide of the Eyes: Poems by Bijan Elahi (New York: The Operating System, Glossarium: Unsilenced Texts & Modern Translations series, 2019).

She is currently Professor, Islamic World and Comparative Literatures, University of Birmingham at the University of Birmingham in the UK.

She has been interviewed by The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Morning Star, The Nasiona, WordMothers, the China Book Review, and the Islamic Studies website Alukah.

For more information on her work and activities, see her website.

Articles, Publications, Appearances