Sam Lasman

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Humanities Teaching Fellow
Classics 116
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2020
Teaching at UChicago since 2020

Sam Lasman is a recent graduate of the Department of Comparative Literature and a Humanities Teaching Fellow. Lasman's work focuses on depictions of the past in Middle Eastern and European medieval literature, particularly in the Iranian world and the British Isles. Primary interests include the role of the marvelous/supernatural/uncanny in works set in the past; the role of historical/fantastical narratives in shaping identity in the medieval period and beyond; and considerations of subjectivity in accounts of the past. Lasman was a 2019-2020 Fellow at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, a Chicago Center for Teaching Fellow for 2018-19, and a recipient of a Summer 2019 Nicholson Research Grant as well as a Summer 2018 FLAS Fellowship for the study of Arabic in Amman, Jordan. ­­

 

Select Publications: "Otherworld Treasure and Bardic Disguise: Recovering the Past in Medieval Celtic and Persian Literatures," in Looking Ahead: Global Encounters in the North Atlantic, ca. 350-1300 (A special dossier in Viator). Eds. Nahir Otaño Gracia, Nicole Lopez-Jantzen, & Erica Weaver. Brepols Publishers (forthcoming.)  

 

                             "Otherworld Literature: Parahuman Pasts in Classical Persian Historiography and Epic," in Persian Literature as World Literature. Eds. Mostafa Abedinifard, Omid Azadibougar, & Amirhossein Vafa. Bloomsbury Academic (Literatures as World Literature series) (forthcoming). 

 

                               "Singing in Chains: Prison, Porter, and Transgressive Narration in Medieval Welsh Tales of the Past," in Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 372017. Eds. Celeste Andrews, Heather Newton, Joseph Shack, & Joe Wolf. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 2019.

 

Workshops: Persian Circle/Anjoman-e Sokhan (Coordinator, 2018-19), Animal/Non-Human Studies (Co-coordinator, 2018-19); Medieval Studies (Co-coordinator, 2016-17)

 

Subject Areas/Research Clusters/Field of Study: Track 1. National Literatures: Persian, French, and Celtic Literatures.

Research interests: Animal/Non-Human/Monster Studies; premodern understandings of the past; premodern cross-cultural exchange and interaction.

Teaching Experience: Uncanny Encounters in Global Medieval Literature (Instructor, Fall 2018); Elementary Persian 1, 2, & 3 (Language Assistant, Fall 2017, Winter 2018, & Spring 2018); Self-Creation as a Philosophical and Literary Problem (Teaching Assistant, Spring 2017)

Education B.A., Modern Middle Eastern Studies and Theater Studies, Yale University, 2012. Ph.D. Comparative Literature, University of Chicago, 2020