Matthew S. Melvin-Koushki University of South Carolina Department of History 211 Gambrell Hall Columbia, SC 29208 (803) 777-2905 mmelvink@sc.edu EDUCATION Ph.D. M.Phil. M.A. B.A. Yale University, with distinction (Islamic Studies) Yale University, with distinction (Islamic Studies) Yale University (Islamic Studies) University of Virginia, summa cum laude (Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures) University of Jordan (Arabic) May 2012 Dec. 2009 May 2008 May 2004 Spring 2002 Dissertation title: “The Quest for a Universal Science: The Occult Philosophy of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī (1369-1432) and Intellectual Millenarianism in Early Timurid Iran” Winner, 2012 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Humanities, Middle East Studies Association Honorable Mention, 2012 Dissertation of the Year on a Topic in Iranian Studies, Foundation for Iranian Studies ACADEMIC POSITIONS Associate Professor, Department of History, University of South Carolina; Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellow of History, 2020-2023 2020-present Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of South Carolina 2014-2020 Visitor, Shii Studies Research Program, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton 2018-2019 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University 2013-2014 Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 1 Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Oriental Institute/Junior Research Fellow, Pembroke College, University of Oxford 2012-2013 Teaching Fellow, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University; Instructor, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations (2010) 2008-2010 MAJOR GRANTS Co-PI, European Research Council Synergy Grant (€9,000,000) 2025-2031 “Mapping Occult Sciences Across Islamicate Cultures” (MOSAIC) is the first major project to investigate Islamic and Eastern Christian occult-scientific sources, spanning from late antiquity to the nineteenth century and from Iberia to India, in a vast continuum of languages (Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Turkish). It is generally acknowledged that occult sciences—alchemy, astrology, geomancy, lettrism, magic and a wide range of other operative and prognosticative disciplines—are integral to any history of science and technology. By including the far larger non-Latinate occult-scientific archive, equally integral to this history, MOSAIC is poised to bring about a paradigm shift. We untangle the term “occult” in all its diversity and test a more expansive definition to account for the specific epistemologies driving its multifarious applications. This dynamic and adaptive heuristic not only opens new avenues in the study of body-mind, nature-culture relationships in the historical construction of natural and mathematical science; it also reveals new paths of dissemination and crosspollination of the occult sciences in Islam and Byzantium, restoring a vast textual and artifactual record largely neglected to date. Retrieving occult science will require an unprecedented degree of synergetic expertise, international collaboration and the training of a new generation of highly qualified scholars. We will (1) identify, investigate, catalogue and interpret a critical mass of highly technical sources, making them available through editions, translations, surveys, studies, exhibitions and conferences; (2) combine, as feasible, the study of scientific theories with their technological practice, including through experimental reconstruction; (3) develop a suite of open-access digital tools of immediate use to specialists and nonspecialists alike; and (4) integrate all our findings in a print and born-digital Master Synthesis as an engine for the field going forward. PUBLICATIONS Books The Lettrist Treatises of Ibn Turka: Persian Pythagoreanism and Imperial Occultism in the Timurid Renaissance (manuscript accepted for submission to Brill’s Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science series, December 2025) Ibn al-ʿArabī, Starsets and Moonrises: A Complete Manual of the Sufi Path, introduction, edition and translation, Library of Arabic Literature (New York: New York University Press, forthcoming 2025) The Occult Science of Empire in Aqquyunlu-Safavid Iran: Two Shirazi Lettrists and Their Manuals of Magic: With an Edition and Translation of Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī’s A Spiritual Boon and Maḥmūd Dihdār’s Choicest Talismans (manuscript accepted for submission to Brill’s Iran Studies series, December 2025) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 2 Occult Philosophers and Philosopher Kings in Early Modern Iran: The Life and Legacy of Ibn Turka, Timurid Lettrist (manuscript in preparation) Edited Volumes Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies: Practices from the 2nd/8th to the 13th/19th Centuries, ed. Sonja Brentjes, associate ed. Matthew Melvin-Koushki et al. (New York: Routledge, 2023) (812 pp.) Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice, ed. with Liana Saif, Francesca Leoni and Farouk Yahya, Handbook of Oriental Studies Vol. 140 (Leiden: Brill, 2021) (703 pp.) Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives, ed. with Noah Gardiner, special double issue of Arabica 64, nos. 3-4 (2017): 287-693 (407 pp.) Journal Articles “The Occult Court: ʿAlī Ṣafī’s Boon for the Khan (1522) as Timurid-Safavid Manual of Boozing and Battling Magic and Marker of Early Modernity,” in The Religious Cultures of Premodern Islamicate Courts in Transregional Perspective, ed. Christian Mauder, special issue of Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 37, no. 1 (2025), forthcoming (c. 12,000 words) “The New Brethren of Purity: Ibn Turka and the Renaissance of Pythagoreanism in the Early Modern Persian Cosmopolis,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 13, no. 1 (2025), forthcoming (c. 25,400 words) “Translating Esotericism: Early Modern Persian,” in Translating Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Mriganka Mukhopadhyay, special issue of Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism 11, no. 1 (2023 [2024]): 103-12 (c. 3,100 words) “An Islamic Scientific Revolution? Early Modern Occult Science, Cosmic Philology and the Weird,” special roundtable issue, ed. Justin Stearns and Nahyan Fancy, History of Science 61, no. 2 (2023): 16672 (c. 3,100 words) “Lettrism, Astrology and Jazz Philosophy in Ibn ʿArabī’s Allusions of the Quran in the World of Man,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society 73 (2023): 53-75 (c. 8,000 words) Winner of the inaugural MIAS Translation Prize competition, Fall 2022 ($3,000) “Safavid Twelver Lettrism between Sunnism and Shiʿism, Mysticism and Science: Rajab al-Bursī vs. Maḥmūd Dihdār,” in “Decolonising Islamic Intellectual History: Perspectives from Shiʿi Thought,” ed. Sajjad Rizvi and Ahab Bdaiwi, special issue of Global Intellectual History 9, no. 5 (2023): 603-40 (c. 21,000 words) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 3 “Qizilbash Magic: An Edition of ʿAli Safi b. Husayn Vaʿiz Kashifi’s Boon for Majd al-Din, Exemplar of Timurid-Safavid Sunni-Shiʿi Occultism,” Iran Namag 6, no. 3-4 (2021 [2023]): 282-326 (c. 15,500 words) “Occult Ecumenism: Maḥmūd Dihdār Shīrāzī’s Unveiling Secrets as Exemplar of Timurid-Safavid SunniShiʿi Science,” Iranian Studies 55, nos. 5-6 (2022): 1-31 (c. 16,600 words) “Better than Sufi Sex: Ibn Turka on the Superiority of Lettrism to Sufism as Model of Occult Islamic Humanism,” in Islam ed esoterismo/Islam and Esotericism, ed. Michele Olzi and Lisa Pizzighella, special issue of La Rosa di Paracelso no. 2 (2020 [2022]): 53-80 (c. 12,700 words) “Taşköprīzāde on the (Occult) Science of Plague Prevention and Cure,” Nazariyat: Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy and Sciences 6, no. 2 (2020): 133-68 (c. 15,000 words) “Is (Islamic) Occult Science Science?” Theology and Science 18, no. 2 (2020): 303-24 (c. 11,400 words) “World as (Arabic) Text: Mīr Dāmād and the Neopythagoreanization of Philosophy in Safavid Iran,” Studia Islamica 114, no. 3 (2019): 378-431 (c. 23,000 words) “Imperial Talismanic Love: Ibn Turka’s Debate of Feast and Fight (1426) as Philosophical Romance and Lettrist Mirror for Timurid Princes,” Der Islam 96, no. 1 (2019): 42-86 (c. 20,000 words) “How to Rule the World: Occult-Scientific Manuals of the Early Modern Persian Cosmopolis,” Journal of Persianate Studies 11, no. 2 (2018): 140-54 (c. 5,800 words) “In Defense of Geomancy: Šaraf al-Dīn Yazdī Rebuts Ibn Ḫaldūn’s Critique of the Occult Sciences,” in Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives, ed. Matthew Melvin-Koushki and Noah Gardiner, special double issue of Arabica 64, nos. 3-4 (2017): 346-403 (c. 25,300 words) “Powers of One: The Mathematicalization of the Occult Sciences in the High Persianate Tradition,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 5, no. 1 (2017): 127-99 (c. 30,600 words) “Of Islamic Grammatology: Ibn Turka’s Lettrist Metaphysics of Light,” al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: Journal of Middle East Medievalists 24 (2016): 42-113 (c. 35,000 words) “Mobilizing Magic: Occultism in Central Asia and the Continuity of High Persianate Culture under Russian Rule,” Studia Islamica 111, no. 2 (2016): 231-84 (co-author with James Pickett, c. 23,600 words) Russian summary by Alfrid Bustanov, “Мобилизация магии: оккультизм в Центральной Азии и продолжение высокой иранизированной культуры под властью России,” Исламовед.ру, 23 November 2016 “Astrology, Lettrism, Geomancy: The Occult-Scientific Methods of Post-Mongol Islamicate Imperialism,” The Medieval History Journal 19, no. 1 (2016): 142-50 (invited essay in dialogue entitled “Cosmos and Power,” ed. A. Azfar Moin) (c. 3,200 words) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 4 “The Delicate Art of Aggression: Uzun Hasan’s Fathnama to Qaytbay of 1469,” Iranian Studies 44, no. 2 (2011): 193-214 (c. 6,600 words) Book Chapters “Reading, Then Rewriting, the Cosmic Text: Kāshifī’s Jewels of Exegesis and the Timurid Canonization of Tafsir as Magic,” in Esotericism and the Qur’an/L’ésotericism et le Coran, ed. Wissam Halawi and Bruce Fudge (forthcoming 2024) (c. 11,700 words) “Timurid-Mughal Philosopher-Kings as Sultan-Scientists,” in Rulers as Authors in the Islamic World: Knowledge, Authority and Legitimacy, ed. Maribel Fierro, Sonja Brentjes and Tilman Seidensticker (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 596-630 (c. 14,200 words) “Being with a Capital B: Ibn Turka on Ibn ʿArabī’s Lettrist Cosmogony,” in Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation: Texts and Studies in Honor of William C. Chittick and Sachiko Murata, ed. Mohammed Rustom (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 150-77 (c. 10,100 words) “Shaykhi Prayer as Safavid-Qajar Occult Technology,” English introduction to Muṣṭafā b. Muḥammad Hādī Khūʾī (d. 1839), Hidden Gems and Treasured Pearls (Javāhir-i maknūna u laʾālī-yi makhzūna), ed. Alireza Asghari and Muhammad Abdullahiyan (Leiden: The Islamic Manuscripts Press, 2022), 531 (c. 7,800 words) “Another Scientific Revolution: The Occult Sciences in Theory and Experimentalist Practice,” in Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies: Practices from the 2nd/8th to the 13th/19th Centuries, ed. Sonja Brentjes (New York: Routledge, 2023), 328-39 (c. 7,000 words) “The Occult Sciences in Safavid Iran and Safavid Occult Scientists Abroad,” in The Safavid World, ed. Rudi Matthee (New York: Routledge, 2021), 403-27 (c. 14,000 words) “Divining Past, Present and Future in the Sand: A Persian-Turkish-Arabic Geomantic Miscellany, ca. Sixteenth Century,” in The Ottoman World: A Cultural History Reader, 1400-1700, ed. Hakan T. Karateke and Helga Anetshofer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021), 244-53 (3,500 words) “Toward a Neopythagorean Historiography: Kemālpaşazāde’s (d. 1534) Lettrist Call for the Conquest of Cairo and the Development of Ottoman Occult-Scientific Imperialism,” in Islamic Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice, ed. Liana Saif, Francesca Leoni, Matthew Melvin-Koushki and Farouk Yahya (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 380-419 (c. 14,500 words) “The Occult Sciences in Safavid Iran,” in The Empires of the Near East and India: Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities, ed. Hani Khafipour (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 345-65 (c. 9,000 words) “Pseudo-Shaykh Bahāʾī on the Supreme Name, a Safavid-Qajar Lettrist Classic,” in Light upon Light: Essays in Islamic Thought and History in Honor of Gerhard Bowering, ed. Jamal J. Elias and Bilal Orfali (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 256-90 (c. 14,600 words) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 5 “Persianate Geomancy from Ṭūsī to the Millennium: A Preliminary Survey,” in Occult Sciences in Premodern Islamic Cultures, ed. Nader El-Bizri and Eva Orthmann (Beirut: Orient-Institut Beirut, 2018), 151-99 (c. 25,400 words) “Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Religiopolitical Legitimacy,” in The Wiley-Blackwell History of Islam, ed. Armando Salvatore, Roberto Tottoli, Babak Rahimi, M. Fariduddin Attar and Naznin Patel (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), 353-75 (c. 10,700 words) “The Occult Challenge to Messianism and Philosophy in Early Timurid Iran: Ibn Turka’s Lettrism as a New Metaphysics,” in Unity in Diversity: Mysticism, Messianism and the Construction of Religious Authority in Islam, ed. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 247-76 (c. 14,000 words) Review Essays “Definition as (De)colonial Weapon: Western Esotericism Meets Islamic Occultism and Is Weirded Out,” invited response essay, forum on Steven Engler and Mark Q. Gardiner, “(Re)defining Esotericism: Fluid Definitions, Property Clusters, and the Cross-Cultural Debate,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 24 (2024): 231-35 forthcoming (c. 1,400 words) “Magic in Islam between Protestantism and Demonology: A Response to Günther and Pielow’s Response,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 15, no. 1 (2020): 132-39 (c. 3,000 words) “Magic in Islam between Religion and Science,” review essay on Sebastian Günther and Dorothee Pielow, eds., Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt: Magie im Islam zwischen Glaube und Wissenschaft (Leiden: Brill, 2019), in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 14, no. 2 (2019): 255-87 (c. 13,000 words) “Taḥqīq vs. Taqlīd in the Renaissances of Western Early Modernity,” review essay on Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016); and Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin A. Elman and Ku-ming Kevin Chang, eds., World Philology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015), in Philological Encounters 3, nos. 1-2 (2018): 193-249 (c. 23,000 words) “De-orienting the Study of Islamicate Occultism,” introduction to Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives, ed. Matthew Melvin-Koushki and Noah Gardiner, special double issue of Arabica 64, nos. 3-4 (2017): 287-95 (c. 3,700 words) “(De)colonizing Early Modern Occult Philosophy,” review essay on Liana Saif, The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 12, no. 1 (2017): 98-112 (c. 6,000 words) “Conjuncting Astrology and Lettrism, Islam and Judaism,” afterword to special issue “Characterizing Astrology in the Premodern Islamic World,” ed. Elizabeth Sartell and Shandra Lamaute, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 12, no. 1 (2017): 89-97 (c. 3,500 words) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 6 “‘Mysticism’ in Iran, 17th-21st Centuries,” review essay on Ata Anzali, “Safavid Shiʿism, the Eclipse of Sufism and the Emergence of ʿIrfān” (Ph.D. dissertation, Rice University, 2012), in Dissertation Reviews (29 May 2014) (c. 6,000 words) Popular Articles “Dr. Dee’s Ottoman Adventure,” Hellebore no. 6 (Samhain 2021): 70-79 (c. 2,000 words) “Magic helped us in pandemics before, and it can again,” Psyche, 26 May 2021 (c. 2,000 words) Reviews Teren Sevea, Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), American Historical Review (2025) (forthcoming) Mana Kia, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin before Nationalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020), Journal of Islamic Studies (2025) (forthcoming) Alessandro Palazzo and Irene Zavattero, eds., Geomancy and Other Forms of Divination (Florence: SISMEL—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2017), Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 98, no. 4 (2023): 129698 Sonja Brentjes, Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies (800-1700) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 10, no. 3 (2022): 377-80 Encyclopedia Articles Encyclopædia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (New York: Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation, 1983-): “Ḵānaqāh,” Vol. 15, pp. 456-66 (c. 10,500 words, co-author with Gerhard Böwering) “Maḥmud Dehdār Širāzi” (c. 3,400 words) “Ṣāʾen-al-Dīn Torka Eṣfahānī” (c. 4,000 words, forthcoming) Encyclopædia of Islam 3, ed. Kate Fleet et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007-): “Dawlatshāh Samarqandī” (c. 700 words) “Ibn Turka” (c. 4,500 words, forthcoming) “Mīr Dāmād, Muḥammad Bāqir” (c. 4,000 words, forthcoming) “Lettrism” (c. 5,000 words, forthcoming) Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, ed. Gerhard Böwering et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012): “Tamerlane (1336-1405)” (c. 700 words) “Mongols” (c. 900 words) “Khunji, Fazl Allah b. Ruzbihan (1455-1521)” (c. 900 words) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 7 “Qajars (1789-1925)” (c. 700 words) Source Companion for Research on Islamic Political Thought (SCRIPT), ed. Stefan Leder et al. (Beirut: Orient-Institut Beirut, forthcoming 2022): “Khunjī Iṣfahānī, Fażlallāh b. Rūzbihān: Sulūk al-Mulūk” (c. 4,500 words) Prognostication in the Medieval World: A Handbook, ed. Hans Christian Lehner, Klaus Herbers and Matthias Heiduk, 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020): “Geomancy in the Islamic World” (c. 2,500 words) Philological Practices: A Comparative Historical Lexicon, ed. Glenn W. Most, Anne Eusterschulte and Martin Kern (forthcoming): “ʿIlm-i ḥurūf” (c. 1,500 words) Preprint Articles “ʿSelenocentrism and Heliocentrism in Early Modern Persianate Imperial Cultures: ʿAlī versus Jesus, with Hermes Presiding” (invited chapter, submitted) (c. 15,400 words) “Mīr Dāmād’s On Doffing: Safavid Philosophy, Ritual Magic and Out-of-Body Experience” (invited festschrift article, submitted) (c. 14,000 words) “India Is Magic: Orientalism and Oriento-Occidentalism in the Persianate Occult Enlightenment” (invited chapter, in progress) “Imami Occultism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shiʿi Islam, ed. Sajjad Rizvi and Ahab Bdaiwi (invited chapter, in progress) “Mīr Dāmād, Pythagorean Lettrist: Selections from the Firebrands and Epiphanies” (invited article for 400th-anniversary volume on Mīr Dāmād, ed. Zaid Alsalami et al., Ketâb Gozâr: An International Quarterly Journal in Islamic Sciences and Heritage, Isfahan) (submitted) “Shiʿizing Iran—with Sunni Occult Science: ʿAlī Ṣafī’s (d. 1533) Amulet of Protection from the Trials of Time as Timurid-Safavid Manual of Lettrist Imperialism” (in progress) “Divining Chaldiran: Ottoman Deployments of Astrology, Lettrism and Geomancy in the OttomanSafavid Conflict” (co-author with Ahmet Tunç Şen, in progress) “Mughal (Occult-)Scientific Imperialism: The Zīj-i Shāhjahānī” (invited article for History of Science special issue, ed. Ali Yaycioğlu and Tuna Artun, 2023; in progress) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 8 “The Occult Science of Iskandar’s Alexandrian Empire: Lettrism and Astrology in the Constellation of Timurid Saint-Philosopher-Kingship” (invited chapter for Ilse Sturkenboom, ed., Iskandar’s Splendour, for submission to Edinburgh University Press; in progress) “Shams al-Dīn Khafrī on Geomancy” (in progress) “Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī on Geomancy” (in progress) “The Unpatriotic Persian: Fażl Allāh Khunjī and the Development of Anti-Safavid and Anti-Shiʿi Propaganda, 1488-1521” (in progress) Translations Encyclopaedia Islamica, ed. Wilferd Madelung and Farhad Daftary, Leiden: Brill in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies (51 articles translated to date as member of a team working on a 16volume abridged translation of the Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī, published in Persian by the Center for Iranian and Islamic Studies, Tehran; 2010-present) Muḥammad Mitwallī al-Shaʿrāwī, Tafsīr al-Shaʿrāwī (member of a translation team working on the Azhari scholar’s popular 25-volume Quran commentary, under contract with Dar El Shorouk; 20092010) PRESENTATIONS Invited Talks “The Tricksy Magic of Qajar Dominion: Memories of Timurid-Safavid Occult-Scientific Imperialism,” The Royal Domain: The Qajar Empire and the Nineteenth-Century Persianate World, international conference, MacMillan Center, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (May 2025) “Persian Pythagoreans Turn Time’s Wheel: The Rise of Reincarnationism as Early Modern Imperial Mode,” Metempsychosis in Islam, international conference, Campus Condorcet, Paris, France (May 2025) Respondent, European Magic and Its Traditions, lecture series, Warburg Institute, London, UK (May 2025) (online) “Islamic Neopagan Earth Magic: Notes Toward a Decolonial Typology,” Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean Narratives, University of Bologna, Italy (January 2025) “Persian Pythagoreanism and Imperial Occultism as Lived Panpsychism,” Islamic Panpsychism Workshop, University of Exeter, UK (May 2024) (online) “A Sīmāwian-Sakkākian Manual of Boozing and Battling Magic: ʿAlī Ṣafī’s Boon for the Khan (1522) and the Democratization of Timurid-Safavid Court Occulture,” Spellbound: Arabic and Persian Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 9 Handbooks of Practical Magic, international symposium, MacMillan Center, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (April 2024) “Mapping Consciousness and Paranormality: Ibn ʿArabī’s Starsets and Moonrises as an Empiricist Manual of Neoplatonic Technology,” public lecture, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society Seminar (December 2023) (online) “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Islamic Magic,” GEM Forum, Department of Religion and Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program, Rice University, Houston, Texas (October 2023) “Occult Democracy in Sixteenth-Century Persian Grimoires,” program workshop, Department of Religion and Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program, Rice University, Houston, Texas (October 2023) “Islam Gets You High,” Entheogenic Humanities, inaugural conference, Center for Theory and Research, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California (August 2023) “India Is Magic: Orientalism and Oriento-Occidentalism in the Persianate Occult Enlightenment,” India in the Making of the Global Esoteric: 1200-2000, international conference, Institute for History, Leiden University, The Netherlands (June 2023) “Presto chango! Illusionism and Sleight-of-Hand as Real Science in Early Modern Persian Grimoires,” UseFool ERC Project, University of Bologna, Italy (June 2023) “Is Islamic Occultism Secularism?,” The Ethics of Idolatry: Sun and Cosmos Worship in Judaism and Islam, international workshop, The University of Texas at Austin (April 2023) “Persian Imperial Democratic Occult: ʿAlī Ṣafī’s Amulet of Protection from the Trials of Time as Early Modern Sunni-Shiʿi Canon of Lettrism,” Des lettres isolées à la science des lettres, international colloquium, Ifpo Erbil, Erbil Citadel, Iraq (November 2022) (online) “Occult Studies and/as the Future of Islamic Studies,” inaugural lecture, Instytut Orientalistyki, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland (October 2022) (online) “Out-of-Body Experience as Occult Technology in Early Modern Iran,” A Light Footprint in the Cosmos, international symposium, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (June 2022) (online) “Philosophy, Amuletry and Talismanic Cities: Isfahan as Timurid-Safavid Occult Capital,” Seeing Isfahan, international conference for exhibition “Meeting in Isfahan,” Chester Beatty and Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland (May 2022) “Riddling Occultly the Cosmic Text: Kāshifī’s Jewels of Exegesis,” Esotericism and the Qur’an, University of Lausanne/University of Geneva, Switzerland (May 2022) (online) “From Ibn Masarra to Ibn Turka: The Construction of an Imperial Occult Orthodoxy between Iberia and Iran,” Power, Religion and Wisdom: Bāṭinism between Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in TenthMelvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 10 Century al-Andalus, international workshop, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey (March 2022) “Qizilbash Magic: The Science of Fighting and Feasting in Safavid Iran,” Iran Colloquium, MacMillan Center, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (February 2022) (online) Guest lecture, B.A. seminar, “Modes of Knowing in Medieval Arabic and Persian Thought,” Ahab Bdaiwi, Leiden University (November 2021) (online) Panel respondent, “Islamic Esotericisms: From Theology to Exegesis,” Middle East Studies Association, 55th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (October 2021) (online) “Panpsychism and Mathematical Humanism in Arabic and Persian Classifications of the Sciences,” Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley (September 2021) (online) “Is Occult Philosophy Philosophy?,” New Approaches to Cosmos and Spirit in the Premodern World, book-launch conference, Warburg Institute, London, England (July 2021) (online) “The Islamic Occult between Early Modern Science and Modern Colonialism: or, American Missionaries and Officials Weaponize Arabic Occult-Scientific Texts,” Performing Objects and the Objects of Performance in the Global Early Modern, John Hay Library and Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, Brown University (June 2021) (online) “Panpsychism, Occultism and Mathematical Humanism in Arabic and Persian Classifications of the Sciences,” Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana (May 2021) (online) Keynote, “Healing Is Believing: Medical Magic between Science and Religion,” Magic, Healing and Religion Workshop, Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (May 2021) (online) “Panpsychism and Mathematical Humanism in Arabic and Persian Classifications of the Sciences,” ETI Workshop, Theory of Science and the Sciences in the Post-Avicennian Period, Berlin, Germany (March 2021) (online) “Reading Safavid Occult-Scientific Miscellanies,” Masterclass on Eurasia series, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (two meetings, March 2021) (online) “On Taşköprīzāde’s Plague Treatise,” History of Infectious Disease in the Islamicate World, international working group (March 2021) (online) “Shiʿizing Iran—with Sunni Occult Science,” Leiden University Shii Studies Initiative, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands (November 2020) (online) “Is (Islamic) Occult Science Science?,” CU Mediterranean Studies Group, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado (November 2020) (online) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 11 “The Physics and Metaphysics of Early Modern Persianate Empire,” Eurasian Empires, workshop series, Stanford University, Stanford, California (March 2020) (postponed) “Star Science, Earth Science: Geomancy and Agriculture as Modes of ‘Terrestrial Astrology’” and “Narratives,” Current Trends in the History of Science in Muslim Societies: Debates, Approaches and Stakes, international workshop, New York University, New York (December 2019) Panel respondent, “Undone Jinn and Dragons: The Limits of the Human and the Borders of the Other in Medieval Islamicate Literatures,” Middle East Studies Association, 53rd Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana (November 2019) “Of Islamic Ontogrammatology,” The Origins of Language: Findings from Linguistics, Mathematics and Mysticism, international conference, Hub Foundation, Pleasanton, California (June 2019) (declined) “Taşköprüzāde on the (Occult) Science of Plague Prevention and Cure: Treatise on Healing Epidemic Diseases (Risālat al-Shifāʾ li-adwāʾ al-wabāʾ),” Shared Practices, Common Legacies: Ottoman Science from a Global Perspective, international workshop, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (April 2019) “Magic for Warlords: Imperial Occult Science in the Early Modern Persian Cosmpolis,” Islamic Encounters, lecture series, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (March 2019) “Building Safavid Iran—with Magic: Shaykh Bahaʾi as Architect-Mage,” Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (February 2019) “Is Occult Science Science?,” Middle East Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York (January 2019) “A Timurid Iamblichus in Search of a Julian: Ibn Turka as Early Modern Imperial Ideologue,” Kingship, Ideology, Discourse: Legitimation of Islamic Dynasties, international conference, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, Japan (December 2018) Panel respondent, “Encounters of falsafa and Sufism in the Persianate World, 1200-1900,” Middle East Studies Association, 52nd Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas (November 2018) “Shiʿizing Iran—with Sunni Occult Science,” Islamicists’ seminar, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey (October 2018) “Shiʿizing Iran—with Sunni Occult Science: ʿAlī Ṣafī Kāshifī’s (d. 1533) Ḥirz al-Amān min Fitan alZamān as Timurid-Safavid Manual of Lettrist Imperialism,” The Renaissance of Shīʿī Islam, 15th-17th Centuries, international conference, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, England (October 2018) Presenter, “Exploring the Hermetic Future III,” research seminar, Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, Domaine de Taurenne, France (July 2018) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 12 “Innovation, Inquisition and Debate in Timurid Iran: The Apologies of Ibn Turka; or, Can Sunni Orthodoxy Be Scientific?” The Majlis Revisited: An International Conference, Casa Arabe, Cordoba, Spain (April 2018) “Timurid-Mughal Philosopher-Kings as Sultan-Scientists,” Rulers as Authors: Knowledge, Authority and Legitimacy, Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany (December 2017) Panel respondent, “The Occult in Islamicate Society: The Cases of Magic and Alchemy,” Middle East Studies Association, 51st Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (November 2017) “Occult Science in the Early Modern Persianate World,” Faculty Seminar on Texts and Manuscripts of the Muslim World, Indiana University – Bloomington (October 2017) “Picturing Islamic Ontogrammatology: The Metaphysics of Writing in Timurid-Safavid Iran and Mughal India,” public lecture, Department of History, Rutgers University – New Brunswick (October 2017) “Islamic Philosophy as Occult Practice: The Case of Safavid Iran,” Brown Bag lecture series, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (September 2017) “Mathematizing the Cosmos in Early Modern Iran: Astronomy-Astrology and Neopythagoreanism at Two Timurid Courts,” God and the Stars: Medieval and Early Modern Religion, Society, and Astrology, conference at the Department of History, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (September 2017) Presenter, “Exploring the Hermetic Future II,” research seminar, Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, Domaine de Taurenne, France (July 2017) “Islamic Philosophy as Occult Practice: The Case of Safavid Iran,” ʿIlm wa ʿAmal: Acting Bodies, Conceiving Space in Medieval and Early Modern Islamicate Sciences, conference at the Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California (April 2017) “The Coincidentia Oppositorum Imperialized: Ibn Turka’s Munāẓara-yi Bazm u Razm (1426) as a Lettrist Mirror for Timurid Princes,” Magic and the Occult in Islam and Beyond, conference at the Department of Religious Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (March 2017) “Picturing Islamic Ontogrammatology,” public lecture, Arab Crossroads Program, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE (December 2016) “Strange Attractor: Occultism and the Ottoman Conquest of Mamluk Cairo,” 1516: The Year That Changed the Middle East and the World, conference at the Department of History and Archaeology, American University of Beirut/Yunus Emre Institute, Beirut, Lebanon (December 2016) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 13 Presenter, “Exploring the Hermetic Future I,” research seminar, Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, Domaine de Taurenne, France (July 2016) “World as (Arabic) Text: An Introduction to Islamic Neopythagoreanism,” public lecture, Department of Religion, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (March 2016) “Starlord, Letterlord: Astrology and Lettrism in the Construction of Post-Mongol Persianate Imperial Ideologies,” Political Theologies, workshop at the Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, California (October 2015) “Mīr Dāmād and the Neopythagoreanization of Philosophy in Safavid Iran,” Philosophy and the Intellectual Life in Shīʿah Islam, 1st Annual Shiʿah Institute Symposium, Warburg Institute, University of London, London, England (September 2015) “Persianizing Occultism in Mamluk Cairo,” public lecture, Department of Oriental and Islamic Studies, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany (July 2015) “Conjuncting Astrology: The Mathematicalization of the Occult Sciences in the Premodern Persianate Tradition,” Characterizing Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World, conference at the University of Chicago Divinity School, Chicago, Illinois (May 2015) “Teaching Early Modern Iran,” Teaching Iran: Zoroaster to Khomeini, workshop at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (June 2014) (organizer) “Occultism, Imamophilia and Rationalism in Timurid-Safavid Iran: The Case of Lettrism,” Reason and Esotericism in Shiʿi Islam, 2nd Annual Symposium of the Shiʿi Studies Group, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (April 2014) “Court Neopythagoreans and Philosopher Kings in Early Timurid Iran,” Islamicists’ seminar, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey (January 2014) “Letter Magic and Sacral Kingship in Early Modern Iran and India,” Occult Sciences in Premodern Islamic Culture, conference at the Orient-Institut Beirut, Lebanon (December 2013) “Lettrism as a New Metaphysics: Ibn Turka’s Book of Inquiries,” Yale Arabic Colloquium, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (November 2013) “Occultism, Science and Empire in the Early Modern Islamic World,” public lecture, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, England (February 2013) “The Occult Challenge to Philosophy in Early 15th Century Iran,” IMPAcT Lecture Series in Late Medieval and Early Modern Islamicate Intellectual History, Pembroke College, Oxford, England (April 2012) “Lettrist Commentaries on the Quran in Timurid Iran: Ibn Turka and Ḥusayn Vāʿiẓ Kāshifī,” guest Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 14 lecture for Gerhard Böwering, “Seminar on the Qurʾān,” Department of Religious Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (October 2011) “Ibn Turka (d. 1432): His Intellectual and Literary Context in 15th Century Iran,” Graduate Fellows Colloquium, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (July 2009) Conference Papers “Better Ancestry Through Astral Reincarnation: Persianate Pythagoreanism and Occult Politics,” Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, Tenth Biennial Convention, Tashkent, Uzbekistan (August 2025) (proposed) “Science Is Southern: A Sixteenth-Century Safavid-Mughal Geomantic Manual’s New Map of the World,” Association for Asian Studies, Annual Conference, Columbus, Ohio (March 2025) (accepted) Panel respondent and organizer, “Perso-Mongol Experimentation and the History of (Occult) Science,” paper session presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 57th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (November 2023) “Islam as Astro-Lettrist Magic in Early Modern Persian Grimoires,” Scientiae, 10th Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic (June 2023) “An Occult Correspondence: Ibn Turka’s Letters to Bāysunghur,” Prince Baysunghur, Before & After: Timurid Manuscripts in Context, Persian Manuscripts Association Inaugural Symposium, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (November 2021) (organizer; online) Roundtable speaker, “The Place of the Premodern in Religious Studies,” American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, Texas (November 2021) (online) Roundtable speaker and organizer, “To Better Channel the Dead: Toward a Historical Anthropology of Islamic Magic,” 56th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2021) (online) “Reading Faces in the Sand: Geomantic Applications of Physiognomy in the Early Modern Persianate World,” Association for Iranian Studies, 13th Biennial Conference, Salamanca, Spain (August 2020) (postponed) “The Apologies of Ibn Turka, Timurid Occultist; or, Can Sunni Orthodoxy Be Scientific?,” American Academy of Religion, Pacific Northwest Regional Meeting, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (May 2020) (postponed) “Talismans as Technology: The Construction and Operation of Magical Machines in Early Modern Persian Grimoires and Chronicles,” Middle East Studies Association, 53rd Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana (November 2019) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 15 “World as Arabic-Hebrew Text: Reading the Two Books in the Renaissances of Western Early Modernity,” 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2019) (organizer) Roundtable speaker, “Medicine and Science: Geography, Periodization, Rupture, Continuity (I),” Middle East Studies Association, 52nd Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas (November 2018) (coorganizer) “Putting the Cosmic in Timurid Cosmopolitanism: Ulugh Beg as (Occult) Philosopher-King,” Association for Iranian Studies, 12th Biennial Conference, University of California – Irvine, Irvine, California (August 2018) (organizer) “How to … Rule the World: Occult-Scientific Manuals of the Early Modern Persian Cosmopolis,” Learning by the Book: Manuals and Handbooks in the History of Knowledge, international conference, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (June 2018) “Kāshifī’s Qasimian Secrets: The Safavid Imperialization of a Timurid Manual of Magic,” 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2018) (organizer) “Performing (Occult) Philosopher-Kingship in Timurid Transoxania: Ulugh Beg as Sultan-Scientist,” Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, Eighth Biennial Convention, Tbilisi, Georgia (March 2018) (accepted, withdrawn) “Occultist Imamophilia in Timurid-Safavid Iran,” Shii Studies: The State of the Art, Shii Studies Research Program, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey (December 2017) “Performing (Occult) Philosopher-Kingship in Timurid Transoxania: Ulugh Beg as Sultan-Scientist,” Middle East Studies Association, 51st Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (November 2017) “‘Here Art-Magick Was First Hatched’: Shiraz as Occult-Scientific Capital of the Persian Cosmopolis,” 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2017) (organizer) “Islamic Philosophy as Occult Practice: The Case of Safavid Iran,” American Academy of Religion, Pacific Northwest Regional Meeting, Calgary, Alberta, Canada (May 2017) “Astronomers, Lettrists and Sultan-Scientists Mathematize the Cosmos: Neopythagorean Occultism at the Samarkand Observatory of Ulugh Beg,” Islamic Occultism in Theory & Practice, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Oxford, England (January 2017) (co-organizer) “Islamic Philosophy as Occult Practice: The Case of Safavid Iran,” American Academy of Religion, Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas (November 2016) “Lettrist Cosmologies in 15th-Century Iran: Ibn Turka’s Ṭahawī Circle,” 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2016) “Picturing Islamic Ontogrammatology: The Metaphysics of Writing in Timurid-Safavid Iran and Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 16 Mughal India,” Renaissance Society of America, 62nd Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts (March-April 2016) “The Unpatriotic Persian: Fażl Allāh Khunjī as Pioneer of Anti-Safavid Propaganda,” Middle East Studies Association, 49th Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado (November 2015) “Calculating Power: Occult-Scientific Cosmology and Universal Kingship in 15th-Century Iran and Central Asia,” 14th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Paris, France (July 2015) “Persianizing Occultism in Mamluk Cairo,” 2nd Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies, Liège, Belgium (June 2015) “Ibn Khaldūn’s Anti-Occultism Rebutted,” Renaissance Society of America, 61st Annual Meeting, Berlin, Germany (March 2015) “World As (Arabic) Text: Decoding and Recoding the Cosmos in Early Modern Islamicate Lettrism,” Knowing Nature in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, conference at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland (October 2014) “Philosophical Lettrism in Safavid Iran: Mīr Dāmād and His Sources,” International Society for Iranian Studies, 10th Biennial Conference, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (August 2014) “The Imams and the Ancients in the Canon of ‘Postclassical’ Islamicate Occultism,” American Comparative Literature Association, Annual Meeting, New York, New York (March 2014) “‘Imami’ Letter Magic in Safavid Iran: The Life and Works of Maḥmūd Dihdār ʿIyānī, Shirazi Occultist,” The Occult Sciences in Islamicate Cultures (13th-17th Centuries), workshop at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (February 2014) (organizer) “Occultism and the Practice of Millenarian Politics in the 15th-Century Persianate World,” Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, 6th Biennial Convention, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (September 2013) “Using Heaven to Move Earth: Astrological Letter Magic in Early Modern Islamic Occultism,” Celestial Magic, Eleventh Annual Sophia Centre Conference, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Carmarthen, Wales (June 2013) “Subversion and Synthesis in 15th-Century Islamicate Occult Philosophy: The Lettrism of Kashifi and Davani,” Middle East Studies Association, 46th Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado (November 2012) “Thinking a New Age: The Role of Occult Philosophy in Early Fifteenth Century Iran and Anatolia,” International Society for Iranian Studies, 9th Biennial Conference, Istanbul, Turkey (August 2012) “The Naturalization of Intellectual Lettrism in Early Timurid Iran,” American Academy of Religion, Pacific Northwest Regional Meeting, Portland, Oregon (May 2012) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 17 “The ‘Scientific’ Lettrism of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī and His Circle as a Doctrine of Evolutionary Progress,” Messianism and Normativity in the Late Medieval and Modern Persianate World: Themes and Sources, fourth conference in the project Reconsidering Normativity in Post-Mongol Muslim Communities: Esoteric, Syncretistic and Messianic Trends, Berlin, Germany (September 2010) “Who Were the Neo-Ikhwan al-Safa’? Sa’in al-Din Ibn Turka’s Intellectual Hierarchy and Shi‘i Hurufism in Early 15th Century Iran and Anatolia,” American Academy of Religion, Pacific Northwest Regional Meeting, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (May 2010) “Imami Hurufism and the Neo-Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ in 15th Century Iran: Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Ibn Turka’s Intellectual Hierarchy,” American Oriental Society, Annual Meeting, St. Louis, Missouri (March 2010) “Don’t a Poet Know It: Jāmī’s (d. 898/1492) Verse Translations of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s (d. 632/1235) Tāʾiyya al-Kubrà and the Consolidation of a Commentary Tradition,” American Oriental Society, Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois (March 2008) “Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Mawāqiʿ al-Nujūm and the Master-Disciple Relationship in the Maghrib,” Maghrebi Area Studies, Annual Symposium, Rabat, Morocco (March 2005) ORGANIZATION Working Group Islamic Occult Studies on the Rise (IOSOTR) (co-organized with Noah Gardiner), international working group meeting monthly to showcase and discuss junior scholars’ research; presentation summaries published at islamic0ccult.org (2021-2023) Conferences & Workshops Esotericism Out-reach (co-organized with Veronica Menaldi), series of online international workshops by Societas Magica (February 2024 to present) Magic Un/disciplined, three-day international conference by Societas Magica and hosted by the Department of History, University of South Carolina (September 2022) (hybrid) Prince Baysunghur, Before & After: Timurid Manuscripts in Context (co-organized with Shiva Mihan), two-day international symposium, Persian Manuscripts Association, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (November 2021) Islamic Occult Studies on the Rise (co-organized with Noah Gardiner), three-day international symposium hosted by the Department of History, University of South Carolina (March 2020) (canceled due to COVID-19; reconfigured as the international working group above) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 18 Islamic Occultism in Theory & Practice (co-organized with Liana Saif, Francesca Leoni and Farouk Yahya), three-day international conference hosted by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Oxford, England (January 2017; volume of proceedings published as Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice, Leiden: Brill, 2020) Teaching Iran: Zoroaster to Khomeini, one-day teacher training workshop hosted by the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University (June 2014) The Occult Sciences in Islamicate Cultures (13th-17th Centuries), two-day international conference hosted by the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University (February 2014); volume of proceedings published as Matthew Melvin-Koushki and Noah Gardiner, eds., Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives, special double issue of Arabica 64, nos. 3-4 (2017) Conference Panels & Roundtables “Persianate Occulture Between Science and Religion, Shiʿism and Sunnism, Platonism and War,” paper session presented to the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, Tenth Biennial Symposium, Tashkent, Uzbekistan (August 2025) (submitted) “Grimoires of the Greater West II,” paper session presented to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, 59th Annual Meeting, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2024) (accepted) “Jinnitalia: Sex in the Spirit World,” paper session presented to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, 59th Annual Meeting, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2024) (accepted) “Occult Computing I & II” and “The Ismaʿili Conspiracy,” triple paper session presented to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, 59th Annual Meeting, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2024) “Perso-Mongol Experimentation and the History of (Occult) Science,” paper session presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 57th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (November 2023) “Ritual Tech: Alphanumeric Prayer between Religion and Science,” double paper session presented to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, 58th Annual Meeting, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2023) “Occult Bodywork” and “Reading the Cosmic Scripture: Lettrism from the Thirteenth Century to the Present,” double paper session presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 56th Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado (December 2022) “Islamic Occult Studies on the Rise,” roundtable presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 55th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (October 2021) (online) “To Better Channel the Dead: Toward a Historical Anthropology of Islamic Magic,” roundtable presented to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, 56th Annual Meeting, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2021; postponed from May 2020) (online) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 19 “Occult Landscapes and Mindscapes,” paper session presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 54th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (October 2020) (online) “Magical Materialities: Toward a History of (Occult) Technology in the Islamicate World from the 13th to the 21st Century” (co-organized with Taylor Moore), paper session presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 53rd Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana (November 2019) “Lettrism as Islamic Kabbalah?,” paper session presented to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, 54th Annual Meeting, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2019) “Medicine and Science: Geography, Periodization, Rupture, Continuity (I & II)” (co-organized with Daniel Stolz), two-part roundtable presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 52nd Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas (November 2018) “Esoteric Cosmopolitanisms of Iran: Timurid, Zand, Pahlavi,” paper session presented to the Association for Iranian Studies, 12th Biennial Conference, University of California – Irvine, Irvine, California (August 2018) “Occult Blockbusters of the Islamicate World II: Arabic and Persian,” paper session presented to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, 53rd Annual Meeting, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2018) “Fashioning Philosopher-Kings in the Post-Mongol Persian Cosmopolis, 13th-19th Centuries (I & II)” (co-organized with Jonathan Brack), double paper session presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 51st Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (November 2017) “Occult Capitals of Islam” and “Islamic Magic: Texts and/as Objects” (co-organized with Liana Saif), double paper session presented to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, 52nd Annual Meeting, Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 2017) “Islamicate Occultism I: Words, Spirits, Substances” and “Islamicate Occultism II: Ottoman Book Cultures,” double paper session presented to the Renaissance Society of America, 62nd Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts (March-April 2016) “Pro- and Anti-Safavid Propaganda, 1480-1580,” paper session presented to the Middle East Studies Association, 49th Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado (November 2015) “Locating Occultism in the Early Modern Islamicate World,” paper session presented to the Renaissance Society of America, 61st Annual Meeting, Berlin, Germany (March 2015) “Shiʿism,” paper session presented to the American Oriental Society, Annual Meeting, St. Louis, Missouri (March 2010) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 20 INTERVIEWS & MEDIA COVERAGE “ 科学はフェイクで、魔術がリアル？[Is Science Fake and Magic Real?],” Worksight Magazine, 25 March 2024 “Occult Sciences in the Islamicate World,” Angela’s Symposium, livecast, 2 July 2023 “Islamic Experimental Occult Science,” Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices (RENSEP), Angela Puca, 1 July 2023 “Emily Selove and Matt Melvin-Koushki on Two New Postgraduate Programmes in Magic,” The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP), 28 June 2023 “Islam, the Mongols and ‘the West,’” The “What Is Asia?” Podcast, 13 October 2022 “Episode 5,” Project Wasta Podcast, Fall 2021 “World Pythagoreanism and the Science of Empire,” The Modern Hermeticist, 27 August 2020 Khodadad Rezakhani, “The Occult Science of Persianate Empire,” @GlobalHistoryTalks, #InstaLive, 4 June 2020 Sajjad Rizvi, “Is Occult Science Science?,” #ExeterConvos, #InstaLive, 11 May 2020 Zoe Sottile, “‘We’re All Being Magical All the Time’: Talking Occult Science and History,” Bwog: Columbia Student News, 31 January 2019 “Matthew Melvin-Koushki on ‘the West,’” The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP), 4 July 2018 TEACHING EXPERIENCE University of South Carolina, Department of History  HIST 104 (SCHC): Introduction to Islamic Civilization (Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016)  HIST 104: Introduction to Islamic Civilization (Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023)  HIST 108 (SCHC): Science and Technology in Western History (Fall 2019, Fall 2020)  HIST 108: Science and Technology in Western History (Spring 2023, Fall 2024)  HIST 300: The Historian’s Craft (Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2020, Spring 2021)  HIST 386/RELG 354: Islamic Institutions and Traditions (Fall 2014)  HIST 387/RELG 368: Messiahs, Mystics and Rebels in the Islamic World (Spring 2015)  HIST 388: Kabbalah: Science, Religion and Nature in Western History (Spring 2020, Fall 2022)  HIST 389/RELG 362: Science, Magic and Religion (Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 21       HIST 399-599: Science, Magic and Religion (Fall 2023) HIST 498: Sorcery and Society (Spring 2023, Fall 2024) HIST 499: Occultism in Pre-Civil War South (Spring 2018) HIST 700: Magic and Modernity (Spring 2024) HIST 712: Modern Middle East History (Fall 2014) HIST 712: Science, Magic and Religion (Fall 2016) Princeton University, Department of Near Eastern Studies  NES 382: Messiahs, Mystics and Rebels in the Islamic World (Spring 2014) Yale University, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations  NELC 102/MMES 102: Introduction to the Middle East (supplemental lecturer, Fall 2010) Yale University, Department of Religious Studies  RLST 287: Islamic Theology and Philosophy (teaching fellow, Spring 2010)  RLST 290/MMES 290: Islam Today, Jihad, and Fundamentalism (teaching fellow, Spring 2009)  RLST 170/MMES 192: The Religion of Islam (teaching fellow, Fall 2008, Fall 2009) GRADUATE PROGRAM Founder and lead organizer of USC Department of History MA and PhD focus in Magic and Occult Science, the first of its kind in North America; joint graduate program with the Centre for Magic and Esotericism at the University of Exeter from 2024 (2023-present) PH.D. COMMITTEES Committee Member Adela Foo, TBD, Department of the History of Art, Yale University (2024-present) Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi, “An Enchanted Sea: The Occult Sciences in the Early Modern Indian Ocean World, 1450-1750,” Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University (2024-present) Mohammad Amin Mansouri, “ʿAzīz Nasafī and Sufi-Occult Hierarchical Cosmopolitanism in the Mongol Persianate World,” Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto (2022) Blake Pye, “The Caliphate of Taḥqīq: Ibn ‘Arabi, Islamic Empires, and the Problem of Religious Difference,” Department of Religious Studies, University of Texas at Austin (2022-present) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 22 Sadegh Foghani, “Ayatollahs and Embryos: Science, Politics, and Religion in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Department of History, USC (2018) M.A. COMMITTEES Thesis Co-director Fatma Hamdoun, “The Theory of Power in the Work of Ibn Khaldūn and the Limits of Its Reception within European Macrohistory,” Sciences Po, Paris (2021) Committee Member Kyle Sanders, “Perks of Perkins: Understanding Where Magic and Religion Meet for an Early Modern English Theologian,” Department of History, USC (2018) HONORS & SENIOR THESIS COMMITTEES Thesis Director Emily Giep, “The Religious Responses to the Black Death in the 14th Century,” South Carolina Honors College, USC (Fall 2023) Nora Sartawi, “Short Stories: The Hidden Reality about the Occupation of Palestine,” Department of History, USC (Fall 2022, Spring 2023) Dylan Kobus, “The Magical South and Its Origin: A Study on the Hybridization, Origins and Practices of Slave Religions from 1750 to 1865,” Department of History, USC (Fall 2022) Zoie Anderson-Horecny, “Occultism in the Antebellum American South,” Department of History, USC (Spring 2018) Ayla Toussaint, “On Geomancy,” Department of History, USC (Fall 2016) Committee Member Stuart Wilkerson, “The Loss of Conservativism as a Viable Contemporary Political Theory,” Departments of History and Political Science, USC (Spring 2015) PROFESSIONAL SERVICE Service to the Field President, Societas Magica (May 2023-present) Associate Editor, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (October 2018-present) Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 23 Member, Scientific Committee, Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices (RENSEP) (April 2023-present) Member, Parviz Shahriari Book Award Committee, History of Mathematics, Science and Technology in the Persianate and Islamicate Worlds, Association of Iranian Studies (2024) Vice President, Societas Magica (May 2020-2023) Founding Vice President, Persian Manuscripts Association (March-December 2021) Chair, Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award Committee (Humanities), Middle East Studies Association (2022) Member, Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award Committee (Humanities), Middle East Studies Association (2021) Member, Board of Directors, Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (January 2018-December 2020) Member, Editorial Board, Methods and Methodologies in the Study of Islam, Edinburgh University Press (July 2021-present) Member, Editorial Board, Islamic Manuscripts Press of Leiden (April 2021-present) Member, Editorial Board, Al Mahdi Institute (AMI) Press (April 2021-present) Member, Editorial Board, La Rosa di Paracelso (December 2020-present) Member, Editorial Board, Islamic Inquiries (June 2020-present) Member, Editorial Board, Journal of Persianate Studies (August 2018-present) Member, Editorial Board, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (May 2017-September 2018) Member, Advisory Board, Ritman Research Institute and Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (October 2022-present) Member, Advisory Board, Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam (January 2022-present) Member, Advisory Board, Journal of Islamicate Literatures (April 2017-present) Member, Nominating Committee, Association for Iranian Studies (Spring 2019) Referee, National Humanities Center Fellowship (December 2019) Referee, Peterhouse Research Fellowship, Cambridge University (December 2019) Managing Editor, Dissertation Reviews (April 2013-May 2014) Field Editor for Islamic Studies, Dissertation Reviews (June 2012-May 2015) Field Editor for Medieval and Early Modern Islamic History, The Marginalia Review of Books (January 2013-2015) ERC Consolidator Grant proposal referee Book proposal referee for Columbia University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge Special issue referee for Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft Article referee for: Arabica Comparative Studies in Society and History Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism Journal of the Philosophy of History Theology and Science Entangled Religions Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Intellectual History of the Islamicate World Der Islam Iranian Studies Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 24 Journal of Persianate Studies Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Asiatische Studien Das Mittelalter Modern Asian Studies Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft Substantia The English Historical Review Religion and Literature Entangled Religions Journal of Sufi Studies Journal of Religion and Society The Oriental Anthropologist Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes British Journal for the History of Science Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: Journal of Middle East Medievalists Journal of Shiʿa Islamic Studies Departmental Service Senator, Faculty Senate, University of South Carolina (2024-2027) Member, Executive Committee, Department of History (2022-2023, 2023-2024) Member, Tenure and Promotion Committee, Department of History (2022-2023, 2023-2024) Member, Tenure and Promotion Guidelines Subcommittee, Department of History (2022-2023, 20232024) Member, East Asia Search Committee, Department of History (2021-2022) Member, South Asia Search Committee, Department of History (2021-2022) Chair, Asian History VAP Search Committee, Department of History, USC (2021) Member, Undergraduate Committee, Department of History, USC (2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022) Member, Graduate Committee, Department of History, USC (2015-2016) Member, South Asia Search Committee, Department of History, USC (2014-2015) University Service Member, Boren Scholarship and Fellowship Committee, National Fellowships and Scholar Programs, USC (Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025) Department representative, McNair Top Scholar Day, Meet the SCHC and Scholar Social, Open House (Fall 2019, Spring 2020) Member, Arabic Literature and Culture Search Committee, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, USC (Fall 2018) Member, Islamic World Studies Fellowships Committee, Walker Institute for International Studies, USC (Spring 2016) Member, Faculty and Graduate Student Grants Committee, Walker Institute for International Studies, USC (2015-2016) Member, Islamic Studies Lecturer Search Committee, Department of Religious Studies, USC (Spring Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 25 2016) Member, Arabic and French Literature Search Committee, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, USC (Spring 2015) FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS Peter and Bonnie McCausland Faculty Fellowship, College of Arts and and Sciences (USC) Provost Humanities Grant (USC) ($9,501) Walker Institute International Conference Grant Award (USC) Winner, Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Humanities (Middle East Studies Association) Honorable Mention, Dissertation of the Year on a Topic in Iranian Studies (Foundation for Iranian Studies) Fulbright-Hays/IIE Graduate Fellowship for International Study (Turkey, Egypt) (declined) Yale University Dissertation Fellowship Yale MacMillan Center Dissertation Research Grant Beinecke Manuscript Library Pre-Prospectus Fellowship Yale Graduate School Fellowship (full tuition and stipend) Fulbright IIE Student Scholarship (Morocco) Golden Key International Honor Society Mastercard Asian Studies Scholarship (full tuition) Harrison Undergraduate Research Award (UVa) Summer Research Fellowship (UVa) 2020-2023 Summer 2017 Spring 2017 Fall 2012 Fall 2012 2011-2012 2011-2012 Spring 2011 Summer 2009 2006-2010 2004-2005 2004 2003-2004 Summer 2003 Summer 2003 LANGUAGES Arabic (reading fluency in classical and modern Arabic, speaking competence in Levantine and Moroccan colloquial) Persian (reading fluency in classical and modern Persian, speaking competence) Ottoman and Modern Turkish (beginning reading) German, French, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Anglo-Saxon, Gothic (reading competence) OVERSEAS RESEARCH EXPERIENCE Iran, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS Societas Magica Middle East Studies Association Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 26 Association for Iranian Studies Association for Asian Studies Association for the Study of Persianate Societies Middle East Medievalists International Congress on Medieval Studies American Oriental Society Renaissance Society of America WEBPAGES https://sc.academia.edu/MatthewMelvinKoushki https://islamicoccult.org https://societasmagica.org https://rensep.org Melvin-Koushki CV – Nov. 2024 | 27