Henry M. Bowles is completing his dissertation in Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where he has earned two master’s degrees, one in Comparative Literature, the other in Middle Eastern Studies. His dissertation, entitled “Anatomy of Decadence,” is a transhistorical study of the idea of literary decline in Greek, French, Arabic, and Persian poetics. In 2015, the American Comparative Literature Association awarded Bowles the A. Owen Aldridge Prize for “best graduate essay” for his paper, “Psychological Realism and Early Prose Fiction” (forthcoming in Comparative Literature Studies). A Fulbright Fellow in the Persian Gulf in 2007, Bowles has previously lived in Syria and conducted research in Iraq.

"'Une mixture empoisonnée': La paragone et la polémique antique contre l'Enargeia," Nouvelle revue d'esthétique (forthcoming). "Psychological Realism in Early Prose Fiction," Comparative Literature Studies (forthcoming).

Rhetoric and literary theory in classical and medieval Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Persian; the nexus between literature and philosophy; 19th- and 20th-century French and German thought.