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The Poetics and Politics of Representation: A Comparative Study of ‘Simurgh’ in Four Royal Manuscripts of the Shahnama

The fantastic Simurgh, the mythical bird of ancient Persia, has maintained a significant presence in Persian culture. The visual and textual references to this bird manifest a mysterious and complex symbolism shaped around this super-natural creature in Persian literary sources.

Persian, Pahlavi, and Teaching Farsi

This presentation will maintain that a cogent knowledge of Middle Persian is in fact crucial in understanding many aspects of Modern Persian grammar, both basic and higher level; and that it enable scholars, teachers and educators obtain a clarity on how to best teach the growing and diverse population of students of Persian Language in schools and universities across North America.

Negotiating Modernity: The Prostitute Character in Iranian Film and Fiction

This talk will scrutinize the image of the prostitute and her inflationary popularity in written and visual texts from the Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911) to the Islamic Revolution (1979) to shed light on the shifts in discourse on prostitution in the twentieth-century Iran.

2020/21 Yip So Man Wat Memorial Lecture with Professor Wai-yee Li

The 2020/21 Yip So Man Wat Memorial Lecture with Professor Wai-yee Li (Harvard University) Lecture: Elegance and Vulgarity: The Promise and Peril of Things in Ming-Qing Literature 雅俗分際：明清文學的物情與物累   How is value assigned to things? What is the line between the refinement of good taste and the force of obsession? Is elegance compromised by self-consciousness? How can […]

2021 Asian Studies Annual Careers Night

The Department of Asian Studies is delighted to invite you to our annual Careers Night! Navigating life after graduation can be hard, so each year we bring in alumni with diverse experiences – at home and in Asia – to inform and inspire current students. This event will feature a guest speaker, a panel, and […]