This year, UBC Persian Literature Reading Club at UBC’s Iranian and Persianate Literature, Language and Culture Program at UBC is hosting a series of panel discussions about “Otherness” in modern Persian Literature. The question is what it means to be an “Other” as a writer creating and promoting new genres other than the main body of Persian Literature or to be “Other” in depicting the experience of the minorities in the Persianate world. During the Fall, Winter, and Spring of the upcoming year, we will attend to both trends in modern Persian Literature.
The sessions are hosted by Iranian writer and critic Amir Hosseing Yazdan Bod and Dr. Hessam Dehghani from the Iranian and Persianate Literature, Language and Culture Program at UBC where they invite a writer in that specific genre. During the series they will introduce and analyze genres as varied as Science-fiction, crime novels, memoirs, detective stories, literature of religious, racial and ethnic minorities, and the like.
An interview and discussion with writer and critic Amir Hossein Yazdanbod about the publication of the recently published book “It Should have NOT Be Written” curated and prepared by him and Hamed Esmaeilioun. The book is the memories of the families of the victims of flight PS752 from the time they heard the flight was shot down by IRAN’s Revolutionary Guards. The session will discuss the essence and power of non-fiction to capture the voice of the suppressed and “Others.”
در این جلسه به چیستی ادبیات اقلیت یا دیگری و یا انواعی از ادبیات می‌پردازیم که در ادبیات معاصر فارسی کمتر بدان‌ها پرداخته شده‌است. همچنین در این میزگرد تخصصی با نویسندگان درباره‌ی علل به حاشیه رانده‌شدن این انواع در ادب معاصر، انواع، جایگاه و اهمیت آن‌ها به بحث و گفتگو خواهیم پرداخت
بحث و گفتگویی درباره‌ی چیستی «ناداستان» و اهمیت آن به ویژه برای به بیان تجربه‌های انسانیِ به حاشیه رانده‌شده و سرکوب شده و تاثیر آن به جهت روان درمانگری
به بهانه‌ی چاپ کتاب «نباید نوشته می‌شد» مجموعه خاطرات بازماندگان جنایت پرواز PS752
تاریخ جلسه:
یکشنبه ۲۷ نوامبر ۲۰۲۲
ساعت ۱۱ صبح به وقت ونکوور ۱۰:۳۰ شب به وقت تهران
Date & Time:
Sunday, November 27th , 2022
11:00am (PST) / 10:30pm (Tehran Time)
Location:
West Vancouver Memorial Library, Welsh Hall (1950 Marine Dr Welsh Hall, West Vancouver, BC V7V 1J8)
*There is also an option to watch the event virtually. The lecture will be live-streamed through Zoom.
Presented in Persian
Free & open to the public. Please register via the form below to reserve a spot for in-person attendance or to receive the information to attend online.
Panelists
Amirhossein Yazdanbod was born in 1977 in Tehran, Amirhossein studied philosophy and physics, but later changed his area to computer engineering. He started writing fiction in 2004 and his short story “For Marcia, the Dear Scoundrel” won Ghalam-e Zarrin-e Zamaneh short fiction prize in 2007. Amir’s first collection of stories, The Portrait of the Incomplete Man (Cheshmeh, 2009) won two national book prizes including “Golshiri”. His latest work Stutter (Ofoq, 2013), is a political novel that occurs in Iran, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan. He is also a member of the PEN Canada Writers in Exile group and published essays and short stories in Canada.
امیرحسین یزدان‌بد متولد ۱۳۵۶ در تهران است. او تحصیلاتش را در فیزیک کاربردی با گرایش حالت جامد وفلسفهٔ غرب نیمه تمام رها کرد. تحصیلات اصلی او در زمینهٔ کامپیوتر و امنیت شبکه متمرکز شد. از سال ۱۳۸۴ نوشتن داستان را جدی گرفت اگرچه پیش از آن هم چند یادداشت و تک داستان از او در نشریات چاپ شده بود. مجموعه داستان «پرتره‌ی مرد ناتمام» او با اقبال بسیاری روبه‌رو شد و جوایز بنیاد هوشنگ گلشیری وگام اول را نصیب او کرد. همچنین او با همین اثر فینالیست جایزه منتقدان و نویسندگان مطبوعات شد و نامزد دریافت جایزه روزی روزگاری هم بود. یزدان‌بد به خاطر داستان کوتاه «برای مارسیای رذل عزیز» برندهٔ قلم زرین شد. چهارسال بعد او نخستین رمانش «لکنت» را از نشر افق منتشر کرد که با توجه بسیاری از جانب نشریات و روزنامه‌ها و منتقدان مواجه شده است. وی هم‌اکنون ساکن کانادا و عضو انجمن پن و حلقه‌ی نویسندگان در تبعید است و آثاری در نشریات معتبر از جمله فصلنامه‌ی تخصصی اتحادیه‌ی نویسندگان کانادا از وی منتشر شده است.
Dr. Hessam Dehghani earned his first PhD in Linguistics from Allameh Tabātabāi University working on the “Structural analysis and Phenomenological study of Persian Literature” in 2012. He then earned another PhD in Philosophy from Boston College in 2019. Between August 2019 and December 2020, he was a post-doctoral fellow and associate researcher at Harvard Divinity School and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies where he focused his research on the formation of the Persianate identity in Persian Mystic Literature. He has presented on different aspects of Persian mystic literature regularly at Harvard University and Boston College. His latest presentation on Persian Literature at Alireza Ahmadian Lecture Series can be found here. He is also the director and founder of Persian Literature Reading Club at UBC, a public humanities initiative where the most prominent Persian writers, academics, students and the Persianate community at large come together to read about and discuss some of the most pressing human issues raised in the works of Modern Persian Literature.
Besides his research interest, he has been teaching English as a foreign language in Iran since 2000, and Persian and Arabic in North America for the past 8 years. Since 2012, he has taught Persian and Arabic and directed Persian program single-handedly at Boston College for which he received both teaching and leadership award from that institution. In 2021, Dr. Dehghani started his tenure-track position as an assistant professor of teaching Persian language and Culture at the University of British Columbia. In pedagogy, his interests lie in Content-based Instruction and Critical Heritage Language Education for which he has passed multiple CAL, ACFTL and STARTALK workshops and received several certifications from 2013 up to present. He is passionate about implementing technology in teaching Persian and creating open access interactive online textbooks. Implementing the latest findings in Critical Heritage Education and Second Language Acquisition, he and his wife, Mahtab Sirdani, devised a new method of teaching literacy to the heritage learners of Persian, they call Collaborative Storytelling (CT).
Should you have any questions, please contact Dr. Hessam Dehghani at hessam.dehghani@ubc.ca.