Franklin D. Lewis (1961 - 2022) was an Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago with affiliations to the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. He taught classes on Persian language and literature, medieval Islamic thought, Sufism, Baha'i Studies, translation studies, and Iranian cinema. Lewis died after a long illness on September 19, 2022.

Biography

Lewis studied at U.C. Berkeley and completed his graduate work in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His dissertation on the life and works of the 12th-century mystical poet Sana'i, and the establishment of the ghazal genre in Persian literature, won the Foundation of Iranian Studies best dissertation prize in 1995. Lewis previously taught Persian at Emory University, in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies. He founded Adabiyat, an international discussion forum on the literatures of the Islamic World (including Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu) and was President of the American Institute of Iranian Studies (2002-2012 and 2016 to 2020) and directed the Persian Circle (انجمن سخن فارسی/anjamun e sohkan e farsi) at the University of Chicago.

Published works