My new publication, Beyond Anachronism: Questioning Modern Gender and Sexuality Language in Classical Persian Literature (published in Gender and Sexuality in Persian Literary and Religious Traditions: Embodied Encounters, edited by Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Leiden University press, 2026, pp. 181–206), examines the uncritical application of modern gender and sexuality terminology to pre-modern Persian texts. It argues that such categories are neither neutral nor universally transferable, but are historically contingent, culturally specific, and shaped by contemporary political and epistemological frameworks. By foregrounding the semantic, conceptual, and social worlds within which classical Persian literature was produced, the article calls for greater methodological caution and philological sensitivity in interpreting embodied desire, intimacy, and gendered expression in pre-modern contexts.

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