Aileen Das

Aileen Das is a Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, with affiliate appointments in History, Middle East Studies, and Judaic Studies. She specializes in the intellectual history of Greco-Roman and medieval Islamicate medicine and philosophy, with a particular focus on Galen of Pergamum and the transmission of Greek philosophical knowledge into Arabic.

Her research explores how ancient and medieval authors articulated categories of knowledge such as 'medicine,' 'philosophy,' and 'science,' with particular attention to how disciplinary boundaries were drawn and policed in contests for epistemic authority. She is particularly interested in Galen's engagement with Plato's Timaeus as a means of expanding medicine's boundaries to encompass not only the body but also the soul and cosmos.

Das's work analyzes the reception of Greek philosophical knowledge in the medieval Islamicate world, examining how thinkers like Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), Maimonides, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) engaged with and critiqued Galen's medical approach to philosophical questions. Her research also considers the Greco/Syriac-Arabic translation movement and how translators adapted Greek sources for monotheistic audiences.

• Winner of the SCS 2021 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit
• Author of Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato's Timaeus (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
• Book translated into Arabic in 2022
• Recipient of multiple research grants supporting her work on Greco-Arabic studies

Das actively supervises graduate students interested in the history of medicine, science, and technology from the classical to medieval period. She is currently working on a second monograph titled Greek Science and Semitic Secularisms: Greco-Arabic Studies in the 20th Century, which offers an intellectual biography of modern Greco-Arabic Studies through the lens of self-orientalism.