I am a scholar, writer and translator currently based at SOAS University of London, working on the intersections of literary, legal and political theory. Much of my research focuses on the Middle East and the Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union. I have recently broadened my focus to engage with legal and quasi-legal definitions of racism across Europe and North America, as well as with freedom of expression in a global context.

I am co-editor of “The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism” (2020) and author of “Writers and Rebels: The Literatures of Insurgency in the Caucasus” (2016).

Areas of Interest

• Legal and political theory
• Comparison in the humanities and social science
• Law and humanities
• Freedom of expression
• Legal definitions of racism<

Scholarly Publications on Law, Language and Literature

• 2020 “The Limits of Liberal Inclusivity: How Defining Islamophobia Normalises Anti-Muslim Racism,” Journal of Law & Religion 35(2): 250-269.
• 2020 (co-authored with Malaka Shwaikh), “The Palestine Exception to Academic Freedom: Intertwined Stories from the Frontlines of UK-Based Palestine Activism,” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 42(4): 752-73.
• 2019 “Punishing Violent Thoughts: Islamic Dissent and Thoreauvian Disobedience in post-9/11 America,” Journal of American Studies 53(1): 146-171. Awarded the British Association of American Studies’ Arthur Miller Centre Essay Prize (2018).
• 2019 “Is the ‘Hate’ in Hate Speech the ‘Hate’ in Hate Crime? Waldron and Dworkin on Political Legitimacy,” Jurisprudence 10(2): 171-187.
• 2019 “Justice Deferred: Legal Duplicity and the Scapegoat Mentality in Paul Laurence Dunbar’sJim Crow America,” Law & Literature 31(1): 357-379.
• 2018 “Legal Form and Legal Legitimacy: The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism as a Case Study in Censored Speech,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (Online First: https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872118780660).
• 2017 (co-authored with Shamil Shikhaliev), “Beyond the Taqlīd/Ijtihād Dichotomy: Daghestani Legal Thought under Russian Rule,” Islamic Law and Society 24(1-2): 142-169.<
• 2015 “Ijtihād against Madhhab: Legal Hybridity and the Meanings of Modernity in EarlyModern Daghestan,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57(1): 35-66 (on the transmission of critical legal reasoning from Yemen to Daghestan).

Public Commentary

• 2020 “The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism: Defining Antisemitism by Erasing Palestinians,” Political Quarterly. *Translated into Arabic by Muna Abu Bikr and published in Qadaya Israelia 78 (Madar Centre, Ramallah): 39-46.
• 2020 “Why the UK Government Should Not Be Allowed to Define Islamophobia,” Middle East Eye. * Translated into German as “Warum es der britischen Regierung nicht erlaubt sein sollte, Islamophobie zu definieren,” Sicht vom Hochblauen (trans. Evelyn Hecht-Galinski).
• 2020 “Bringing Colston Down,” London Review of Books blog.
• 2018 “The IHRA Definition’’s Imprecision Makes It a Threat to Free Speech,” Prospect Magazine.
• 2015 “The Islamic State’s Perversion of Hijra,” Project Syndicate.

Public Lectures and Interviews

• “Words That Offend vs. Actions That Harm: Antisemitism, Racism, Islamophobia, with Rebecca Gould,” Guest interviewee for “Just Thinking Out Loud” TV (2019).
• “The Obligation to Migrate and the Stimulus to Narrate” (New York University, 2017).

More Information

• Follow Rebecca Gould on Twitter.
• Browse through Gould’s books.
• Read more about Gould’s research and access publications via webpage.
• updates on Gould’s work from Academia.edu.