Events at: Online Event

Learning and Transformation within the Boundaries of Tradition: An Institutional Analysis of Shi’a Political Jurisprudence Copy

The Alireza Ahmadian Lecture in Iranian and Persianate Studies presents: Learning and Transformation within the Boundaries of Tradition: An Institutional Analysis of Shi’a Political Jurisprudence on October 18, 2025. This study is centered on the question of how transformation occurs in Shi’a political jurisprudence through the interaction between entrenched institutional structures and emerging demands. In […]

Pondering Anti-Blackness in the Iranian Context: From Enslavement to the Present

Thinking about antiblackness in the Iranian context since enslavement to the present allows us to become aware of how whiteness finds support for its violence against Black communities throughout the world and leaves us to ask ourselves, how will we show up for Black lives?

No Heaven for Gunga Din (1965): From Speculative Fiction to Decolonial Option

Studies of Anglophone literature, or postcolonial writing in English, are often limited to literatures of the Commonwealth and the former colonies of the British Empire. Yet Ali Mirdrekvandi’s No Heaven for Gunga Din (1965), one of the few cases of Anglophone writing in Iran, a nation which – though never under formal colonial rule – has been deeply shaped by the discourse of colonial modernity.

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.

Representation of Sigheh Women in Modern Iranian Cultural Productions

In this talk, analyzing the representation of sigheh (temporary marriage) women literature of the Pahlavi era (1924-1979) and two cinematic works produced after the Islamic Revolution (1979-), it will be argued that these cultural productions reflect the manner in which the practice of sigheh impacts women by calling into question how sexuality works as a form of political analysis and power.

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.