Research

How communities form people, in the spaces that are not the state.

I work with texts and with the people who still live by them: Sufi orders, contemporary Islamic thought, and the philosophy and poetry in Arabic and Persian behind both. My training is in anthropology, so I read with fieldwork in mind.

A circle of men gathered for dhikr in a courtyard, in a nineteenth-century painting
The Dhikr, by Eugène Baugnies (1841–1891). Public domain.
Interests
Sufi orders and the forming of personsHow a community forms a trustworthy person, through companionship with a living exemplar, and the many relations such communities have had with those who govern.
Contemporary Islamic ethicsTaha Abderrahmane, and his idea of trusteeship read as social theory.
Islamic philosophy and SufismThe philosophers from al-Kindī and al-Fārābī through Avicenna and Suhrawardī to Mullā Ṣadrā, and Ibn ʿArabī and his readers.
Plato in the Islamic worldWhat thinkers writing in Arabic and Persian did with Plato and the Neoplatonists. This is the subject of The Green Mantle.
Poetry and recitationClassical Arabic and Persian poetry as it is recited in gatherings of dhikr, read alongside its commentaries.
Current projects
The Green Mantle: Plato and Islambook · manuscript in revisionHow the Platonic tradition found a second home in Islam, and what the philosophers and Sufis who received it made of it. About the book
Upstream: Forming Human Beings in the Age of the Machinebook · manuscript completeAn argument that many of the crises we treat downstream were shaped earlier, by whether anyone was formed to meet them. About the book
Essays on SubstackongoingEssays on the thinkers, texts and traditions that shape how we live, each with its sources. The most recent: Ibn ʿArabī and the Law: on Samer Dajani’s Sufis and Sharīʿa; Jawdat Saʿīd and Nonviolence in Islam; Cloud Atlas: The Sojourn of Erōs; Sīdī ʿAlī al-Jamal of Fez; The Optics of Wayfaring. All essays
Instagramongoing · @joshuabeneventiShort posts and films that teach one text or one thinker at a time, from the sources. How they are built is on the Teaching page. The sources are kept in the compendium. instagram.com/joshuabeneventi
Mashraba ReaderbuilderA reading tool for classical Arabic and Persian poetry and philosophy, word by word, with the original, translations and commentary side by side. mashraba.org
Mashraba learning communityfounder · 2024–An online learning community of more than 300 members reading classical texts together. I design and teach the seminars, among them a series on Plato, with guest faculty from several universities.
Graduate Assistant to Dr. Philip GamaghelyanKroc School of Peace Studies · 2026–Editorial and research assistance on The Routledge Handbook of Innovations in Peace and Conflict Studies (co-edited by Dr. Gamaghelyan), and desk research for his monograph Evolving Designs: Adaptive Peacebuilding in an Age of Uncertainty.
Striped horseshoe arches along the courtyard of a mosque in Kairouan, in a sepia photograph of 1904
The courtyard arcade of a mosque in Kairouan, Tunisia, 1904. Photograph by Lehnert & Landrock. Library of Congress, public domain.
A carved doorway in the Alhambra, in a photograph of about 1850 to 1880
La Mezquita, the Alhambra, Granada, about 1850 to 1880. Rijksmuseum, public domain.
Earlier research and presentations
“Dissolution & Transcendence: The Relationship between Music and Altered States of Consciousness”: 2018Honors thesis, Department of Anthropology, UC San Diego (faculty mentor: Dr. Steve Parish). An ethnographic case study of Candomblé in Salvador, Bahia, on how music and language work in possession and trance.
“On Time, Humility, and Finitude”: 2021Symposium, American Psychological Association Annual Convention (Division 24), with Edward Suprenant. Psychological Humanities and Ethics research group, Boston College.
Seminar on the works of Henry Corbin: 2020–21Year-long seminar with Prof. Charles Stang, Harvard Divinity School, by cross-registration from Boston College.
Education
M.S. Conflict Management and Resolution: in progress, 2027Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego. Kroc School Student Merit Award.
Graduate coursework in theology (non-degree): 2020–21Boston College & Boston Theological Consortium
B.A. Sociocultural Anthropology, cum laude: 2018UC San Diego. Anthropology Honors Program; Mel Spiro Award for Excellence in Psychological Anthropology.
A.A. Arabic: 2016Grossmont College. Certificate of Achievement in Arabic; Arabic Club president, 2013–2016.
Languages
English (native) · Portuguese (fluent, Brazilian and European; CAPLE Advanced Diploma, Universidade de Lisboa) · Spanish (fluent) · Arabic (intermediate, Modern Standard; in intensive tutoring twice a week) · Persian and Greek (reading)
Writing
The essays are on Substack and under Writing on this site. The sources behind them, with the talks and readings, are in the compendium. The books are under Books.

Write to me.

joshuabeneventi@gmail.comSubstackLinkedIn