Domenico Ingenito

A photo of Domenico Ingenito
E-mail: ingenito@humnet.ucla.edu Phone: 310-206-1391 Office: 370 Kaplan Hall

Domenico Ingenito is Associate Professor of Persian literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the Program on Central Asia. His research interests center on medieval Persian poetry, visual culture of Iran and Central Asia, gender and translations studies, and manuscript culture. His most recent articles are: “Hafez’s ‘Shirāzi Turk’: A Geopoetical Approach (Iranian Studies)” and “‘A Marvelous Painting’: the Erotic Dimension of Saʿdi’s Praise Poetry” (Journal of Persianate Studies). His most recent book is Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry (Brill, 2020).

Education

PhD, Persian Language and Literature, Università di Napoli “L’Orientale”, Italy (2012)
Proficiency in Persian Language and Literature, Dehkhoda Institute (University of Tehran), Iran (2008)
MA, Comparative Literature (Persian and French), Università di Napoli “L’Orientale”, Italy (2007)
BA, Communication Sciences and Semiotics (Persian and Arabic), Università di Bologna, Italy (2004)

Research

  • Medieval Persian poetry (in particular the history of lyric genres at the intersection of eroticisms, mysticism, and political power)
  • Visual culture of Iran and Central Asia
  • Rhetoric and prosody
  • Anthropology of ritual and symbolic representations (concepts of kingship, death elegies, poetry as a ritualized cultural performance)
  • Comparative literature (lyric poetry, performance studied, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan)
  • Translations studies
  • Gender studies
  • Material culture and its literary reflections
  • Geocriticism and literary archaeology

Books

Articles

Articles and Book Chapters

  • “A Marvelous Painting”: the Erotic Dimension of Saʿdi’s Praise Poetry.” Journal of Persianate Studies 12.1 (2019): 103–166.
  • “Hāfez’s ‘Shirāzi Turk’: A Geopoetical Approach.” Iranian Studies 51. 6 (2018): 851–887.
  • “Jahān Malik Khātūn: Gender, Canon, and Persona in the Poems of a Premodern Persian Princess.” In The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures: The Culture of Love and Languishing, edited by A. Korangy, H. Al-Samman, M. Beard, 177–212. London: I.B. Tauris.
  • “Tabrizis in Shiraz Are Worth Less Than a Dog: Humām Tabrizi and Sa‘di Shirāzi, a Lyrical Encounter.” In Beyond the Abbasid Caliphate: Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th – 15th Century Tabriz, edited by J. Pfeiffer, 77–127. Brill: Leiden, 77-127.
  •  “ʿObayd Zākāni: dieci canzoni d’amore.” Quaderni di Meykhane 3 (2013–14): 10-24.
  • Ingenito, Domenico, and Camilla Miglio (2014). “Hāfez, Hammer e Goethe. La forma ghazal: Weltliteratur e contemporaneità.”In Dai pochi ai molti: studi in onore di Roberto Antonelli, edited by Paolo Canettieri and Arianna Punzi, II, 1109–1127.
  • Ingenito, Domenico (1391/2013) “Hāfez dar itāliyā.” In Hāfez (zendegi va andishe), edited by Kāzem Musavi Bojnurdi and Asghar Dādbeh, 337–351. Tehran: Markaz-e Dāyerat al-Maʿāref-e Bozorg-e Eslāmi.
  • Ingenito, Domenico; Miglio Camilla (2013. “Die Reise des Hāfez von Shiraz über Istanbul und Wien nach Weimar: Oder: ‘Europa hatte nie eine reine Seele’.” Rivista dell’Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici 2 (2013): 247–265.
  • Ingenito, Domenico (2011). “Questi versi una fica li ha cantati – La Dama del Mondo (Jahān Malek Khātun): la maggiore poetessa dell’islam medievale.” Testo a Fronte: teoria e pratica della traduzione letteraria 44 (2011): 37–76.
  • Ingenito, Domenico (2010). “«Sedavo il dolore ardente dei giorni con l’acqua del canto poetico»: I versi della Dama del Mondo (Jahān Malek Khātun).” Semicerchio: rivista di poesia comparata 43 (2010): 40–60.
  • Ingenito, Domenico (2009). “Quattro divān attuali, Hāfez tra ricezione e traduzione.” Oriente Moderno, Nuova Serie, 89.1 (2009): 151–172.
  • Ingenito, Domenico (2009) [review article]. “Šaraf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī, Manẓūmāt, edited by Iraj Afshār (Tehran: Entešārāt-e Soraya.” Eurasian Studies 7 (2009): 141–145.
  • Farrokhzad, Forugh (2008). La strage dei fiori: poesie persiane di Forugh Farrokhzad, translated by Domenico Ingenito. Napoli: Orientexpress.
  • Ingenito, Domenico (2005). “Le Roman d’Abu Moslem Nāmeh.” Eurasian Studies 4.2 (2005): 210–215.

Forthcoming and Works in Progress

  •  Ingenito, Domenico. The Political Qasidas and the Obscene Texts of Saʿdi Shirāzi. Critical Edition Based on Thirty Manuscripts, English Translation, and Socio-Historical Commentary, Mazda Publishers.
  • Farrukhi Sistāni and Sultan Mahmud’s Two Sons: Praise, Performance, and Symbolic Immortality at the Early Ghaznavid Court.
  • ‘Obayd Zakani.  Canzoni d’amore e versi osceni, Carocci Editore. In preparation.
  • “Sa’di’s Ghazals,” Encyclopaedia Iranica.In preparation.
  • “Death Elegies in Persian Literature,” Encyclopaedia of Islam 3. In preparation.
  • The Iranian King’s Two Bodies: Elegies Against Biological Death. In preparation.
  • “Mahmud’s New Garden in Balkh: An Exercise of Literary Archaeology for the Study of Ghaznawid Ephemeral Architecture.” In The City of Balkh: History and Culture of a Great Islamic Capital, edited by Edmund Herzig and Arezou Azad, Oxford University Press.

Courses

Undergraduate

  • Iranian 55: Gender and Sexuality in Arts and Literatures of Iran and Middle East
  • Introduction to Classical Persian Poetry (Iranian 103A, Iranian 103B)
  • Comparative Study of Six Major Persian Poets (Iranian 120)
  • Persian Belles Lettres Adabiyyat (Iranian 140)
  • Persian Analytical Prose – Mystical Cardiology: al-Ghazali and the Science of the Heart (Iranian 141)
  • Survey of Persian literature in English (Iranian 150A)

Graduate

  • Classical Persian Texts (Iranian 220A, Iranian 220B, Iranian 250)
  • Rumi, Mystic Poet of Islam (Iranian 221)

Recent Lectures

Domenico Ingenito’s Podcast Interview with Michael Silverblatt. Hosted by Michael Silverblatt, KCRW, 05/27/2021.New Book Salon. Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry. Presented by Marisa Galvez (Stanford) and Lara Harb (Princeton). Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA, 05/19/2021.Re-Reading Persian Love Poetry: From the Ethics of Experience to the Aesthetics of Vision. Middle East Center, University of Pennsylvania, 04/08/2021.

Obscene and Sacred Dimensions of Medieval Persian Poetry: Sa’di’s Literary Pornography as “Counter-Text” to Mystical Lyric. SOAS, University of London, 03/31/2021.

Ekphrasis, Science, and Vision in 13th-Century Persian Poetry. Yale Department of the History of Art, 16/03/2021.

Adab Colloquium: Islamic Philosophy and Medieval Persian Poetry: Theories of Imagination, the Unseen, and Sensory Experience in Saʿdi’s Ghazals. Columbia University, 03/12/2021.

Book launch: Beholding Beauty: Sa’di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry. Stanford Program in Iranian Studies, 2/4/2021.

Book launch: Domenico Ingenito’s “Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry”. CNES, UCLA, 1/27/2021.

Enacting and Embodying Medieval Sufi Poetry: Performance, Performativity, and Sacred Eroticism. University of Michigan, 11/16/2020.

“The Visible and the Invisible: The Role of the Internal Senses in Persian Sufi Poetry”. Indiana University, 10/28/2020.