The College of Letters at Wesleyan University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Letters, beginning July 1, 2023.

We seek a scholar-teacher with expertise in premodern Islamic intellectual traditions and cross-cultural exchanges around the Mediterranean world.

The successful candidate may work in classical Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Hebrew, Coptic, Ethiopic, Greek, Latin, and/or any number of related languages. Areas of research/teaching expertise may include instances of Muslim cultural transmissions and receptions between and within the societies of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, such as the Graeco-Syriac-Arabic “translation movement,” the cultures of al-Andalus, or Late Medieval travelogues.

The College of Letters (COL) is an interdisciplinary humanities program, offering a three-year B.A. major for the study of literature, history, and philosophy across the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Atlantic from antiquity to the present. The curriculum emphasizes the close reading of texts across a wide range of genres as a method for pursuing an historically situated and critical understanding of cultural exchange and colonial expansion. 

To be hired as an Assistant Professor at the time of appointment, candidates must have a Ph.D. in History, Literature, Philosophy, or in related interdisciplinary fields such as Comparative Literature, Intellectual History, History of Science, History of Rhetoric, History of Religion, Classics, or Qur’anic Studies. A successful candidate may be hired as an Instructor if the candidate does not have a Ph.D. in hand at the time of appointment, but will complete the Ph.D. within one year of hire.