Willis Barnstone

Willis published two books: Poetics of Translation with Yale University Press and African Bestiary with Black Widow Press. The latter contains 250 of his paintings. 

Paul Losensky

Paul spent his last semester before retirement teaching an inter‐arts course on architecture and literature at the University of Lisbon as part of the faculty exchange program between the comparative literature departments of IU and Lisbon. He and his wife, Arzetta, spent a wondrous three months in Portugal, where Paul developed a taste for sardines and glazed tiles. After joining the ranks of the emeriti in July 2023, he enthusiastically embarked on his new life as a “gentleman scholar.” He presented papers at the European Conference for Iranian Studies in Leiden in August, at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Baltimore in October, and at the meeting of the Middle East Studies in Montreal in November. These papers dealt with various aspects of Persian literature in the early modern period, from architectural inscriptions to the wayward lives of partying poets. He started 2024 with a trip to Bonn to attend a workshop on the legacy of Marshall Hodgson, the renowned historian of Islamic civilization. He lectured at Columbia in February on the metaphorical transformations of everyday objects like door knockers and beehives in the poetry of Sa’eb Tabrizi, the master poet of the Persian baroque. Funded by a Bahari Fellowship from the Bodleian Library, Paul spent a chilly and rainy spring in Oxford poring over manuscripts of the verse romance Nal and Daman, a Persian rewriting of a famous love story from the Sanskrit Mahabharata. His facing‐text translation of this poem into English is under contract with Harvard University Press. He has recently been named an honorary fellow of the Association for Iranian Studies for 2024. He continues to work with graduate students at IU and elsewhere and remains amazed at just how much work he can get done once freed from administrative labors and committee meetings.