Dr Emily Selove

Emily Selove (PhD 2012, UCLA) is an associate professor in Medieval Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Exeter. She is also the convener of the University of Exeter's Centre for Magic and Esotericism: blogs.exeter.ac.uk/magic/, a uniquely interdisciplinary collaboration of colleagues across the University of Exeter to study the history of magic and the occult sciences—an area in which our university has exceptional, internationally recognized expertise.

Professor Selove designed and, in 2023, launched a new MA in Magic and Occult Sciences that showcases the unique, interdisciplinary expertise of University of Exeter Colleagus in the study of the history of magic. This MA was featured in the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, and multiple other news organisations.

Professor Selove was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Manchester from 2012-2014, working on the ERC-funded Arabic Commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms project. Her early research focused on the figure of the uninvited guest (or "party-crasher") in medieval Arabic literature, and especially on the 11th-century work ikyat Ab l-Qsim, the subject of her monograph, ikyat Ab l-Qsim: A Literary Banquet (Edinburgh University Press, 2016). She also co-edited and translated this text with Professor Geert Jan van Gelder: The Portrait of Ab l-Qsim al-Baghdd al-Tamm (Gibb Memorial Trust, 2021). Her translation of another 11th-century book of party-crashing is titled Selections from the Art of Party-Crashing in Medieval Iraq. She also co-authored a textbook to introduce beginning students to the city of medieval Baghdad, Baghdad at the Centre of a World: 8th-13th Century, and has created a collection of cartoons titled Popeye and Curly: 120 Days in Medieval Baghdad to accompany this textbook: www.amazon.co.uk/Popeye-Curly-Days-Medieval-Baghdad/dp/1944296190/ref=sr_1_1. Her most recent book was a short monograph for the Cambridge Elements series titled The Donkey King: Asinine Symbology in Ancient and Medieval Magic

Her article "Magic as Poetry, Poetry as Magic: A Fragment of Arabic Spells" in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 2020, explores an area of special interest to her research: the overlap between poetic and magical language. She was the PI of a Leverhulme-funded research project, "A Sorcerer's Handbook," (2019-2022) which will create an edition, translation, and multidisciplinary, multi-authored scholarly analysis of Sirj al-Dn al-Sakkk's (d. 1229) magic handbook, Kitb al-Shmil wa-bar al-kmil (The Book of the Complete): blogs.exeter.ac.uk/thesorcerershandbook/ This multi-cultural, multi-lingual guide to cursing, healing, and harnessing the power of stars, angels, jinn, and devils, was conceived at the crossroads of many magical and religious traditions, and serves as the intersection at which multiple scholarly methodologies and disciplines can intersect today.

Research supervision:

I am happy to supervise projects about magic, medieval Arabic literature (adab), and the influences of Greek and Roman literatures on these traditions. I am also interested in the receptions of medieval Arabic writing in both medieval and modern Europe. In the future, I hope to explore more research that considers alternative epistemologies, embodied sources of knowledge, and creative approaches to scholarship, and would be especially happy to consider projects in this vein.

Current PhD Students:

Hassan Asiri: “The Implicit Patterns in the Hijazi Sensual Ghazal Poetry during the Umayyad Era -A New Historicist interpretation.”

Arghavan Moharrami: “The Winds of Zr: On Occult Performance among Black Indigenous Communities in the Persian Gulf”