Th. Emil Homerin

Thomas Emil Homerin (19 May 1955 – 26 December 2020) was an American scholar of religion. He was Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion & Classics at the University of Rochester. He taught courses on Islam, classical Arabic literature, mysticism. He died in 2020 and buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester.

Early life Thomas Emil Homerin was born in Pekin, Illinois, to Floyd A. Homerin and Miriam Jane Bond. He attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1977 and a master's degree in 1978. He later completed a Ph.D. with honors at the University of Chicago in 1987. In 1977, he married Nora Walter; they had two sons, Luke and Elias.

Career A specialist in Arabic literature and Islam, Homerin had lived and worked in Egypt for a number of years. Among his many publications are The Wine of Love & Life: Ibn al-Fârid's al-Khamrîyah and al-Qaysarî’s Quest for Meaning (Chicago, 2005), From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint (2nd revised edition, Cairo: American University Press, 2001) and his anthology of translations, Ibn al-Fârid: Sufi Verse & Saintly Life (New York, 2001) published as part of the esteemed Paulist Press series Classics in Western Spirituality. This course examines western funeral ritual and practice, with a particular focus on cemeteries in the United States, and how the iconography and epigraphy of graves and funerary monuments forge symbolic connections among the living and the dead. Homerin and his students published the results of their research in Epitaph, the newsletter of the Friends of Mt. Hope Cemetery.

Personal life Homerin died on December 26, 2020 due to pancreatic cancer.