M.A. (Free University, Berlin); Ph. D. (Cantab.)

Project Researcher

Personal Profile

Uwe Vagelpohl studied philosophy, Arabic and Islamic Studies in Bamberg, Cairo and Berlin before completing his Ph. D. in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. He worked as a translator and held research positions at the University of California at Berkeley (2004–5) and Hampshire College (2005–8). In addition to his research on the reception of Greek philosophical and scientific literature, he is a contributor to the upcoming Ovid volume of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. His teaching assignments at Hampshire College included courses on the history of Islam and the emergence and reception history of the Qur’ān.

Research

Translation as a medium of cultural communication and transformation in late antiquity and the Middle Ages is at the center of Uwe Vagelpohl's research. Translations from Greek into Arabic had an immeasurable impact on all aspects of medieval and modern Islamic civilization; they are emblematic for the wide-ranging cultural and scientific exchanges between East and West in the early Middle Ages. Apart from the linguistic issues involved, Uwe Vagelpohl is also keenly interested in the complex interactions between Muslim scholars and their religious beliefs and the antique philosophical and scientific heritage throughout the Middle Ages.

At Warwick, he will contribute to the Warwick Epidemics, the edition of the Arabic version of the first two books of Galen's commentary on Hippocrates' Epidemics under the supervision of Simon Swain and Peter E Pormann.

Recent publications

• Gregor Schoeler, The Oral and Written in Early Islam, tr. by U. Vagelpohl, ed. by J. E. Montgomery (Routledge, 2006)
• Aristotle's Rhetoric in the East. The Syriac and Arabic translation and commentary tradition (Brill, 2008)
• Gregor Schoeler, The Biography of Muhammad, tr. by U. Vagelpohl, ed. by J. E. Montgomery (Routledge, 2009)
• ‘Translation Literature', in Versteegh, Kees et al. (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics 4:542-548 (Brill, 2009)
• `The Prior Analytics in the Syriac and Arabic tradition', in Vivarium 48/1-2 (2010), 132-156
• ‘The Abbasid translation movement in context. Contemporary voices on translation’, in Nawas, John (ed.), Abbasid Studies II. Occasional Papers of the School of Abbasid Studies. Leuven, 28 June – 1 July, 2004 (Peeters, 2009)
• `Cultural Accommodation and the Idea of Translation', in Oriens 38/1-2 (2010), 165-184
• `In the Translator's Workshop', in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 21/2 (2011), 249-288

forthcoming publications

• `The Rhetoric and Poetics in the Muslim World', in Alwishah, Ahmed and Hayes, Josh M. (eds.), Aristotle and the Arabic Tradition (Cambridge University Press)