About me

I am currently a Professor of Middle East/Comparative History at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, USA. I began my career at DePauw in Fall 2006. My research interests are in pre-1500 science and medicine, and intellectual history. My earlier research has examined the intersections of philosophy, theology and medical physiology in the works of Ibn al-Nafis, a 13^th century physician-jurist who first posited the pulmonary transit of blood. The significance of this result is that it forms the basis of William Harvey's (d. 1657) theory of blood circulation, three centuries later. More recently, I have been examining the evolution of medical commentaries in post-1250 Islamicate societies, with an eye towards learning more about the specific trajectory of theoretical medicine in Islamicate societies. I am also interested in the networks of exchange that gave rise to the appropriation of these Islamicate trajectories by Latin Europe during the Renaissance.