Department of Asian Studies
University of British Columbia
About the Alireza Ahmadian Lectures in Iranian and Persianate Studies:
Alireza Ahmadian (1981 – 2019) was an enthusiastic researcher, a consummate socio-political analyst, and an opinion leader on foreign policy who nurtured the virtues of diplomatic dialogue and liberal democracy. Alireza was a proud and devoted UBC alumnus, supporter of UBC’s Department of Asian Studies, and beloved member of Canadian-Iranian Community. The department renamed this lecture series in his honour in 2019. Alireza’s friends in the community have provided funding to support this series, and this generous gift will see these important academic and community engagement events supported through to the end of the 2025/2026 academic year.
Time & Place (unless otherwise indicated): Registration for each program is held separately. All recorded times refer to Pacific Time i.e. the time it would be in Vancouver, Canada.
All events are free and open to the public.
Upcoming Lectures
Join us in fall for our next series!
Subscribe to our Alireza Ahmadian Lecture Newsletter for updates and details on how to register:
Past Lectures List
2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025
Saturday, April 12, 2025
(In-Person at UBC Robson Square) 6:30pm – 9:00pm Pacific Time
Anxious Onlookers: Qajar Iran, Tipu Sultan of Mysore and British colonial expansion, 1797-1800
Speaker: Abbas Amanat, PhD | William Graham Sumner Professor Emeritus of History | Yale University
Saturday, March 8, 2025 (Online – in English)
Translating Persian, Universalizing Islam: The Case of Rumi’s “Moses and the Shepherd”
Speaker: Austin O’Malley, PhD | Assistant Professor of Persian literature | University of Chicago
Discussant: Francesca Chubb-Confer, PhD | Visiting Assistant Professor | Oberlin College and Conservatory
Saturday, February 22, 2025 (Online – in English)
Debating Islam at the Court of the Great Mughal
Speaker: Usman Hamid, PhD | Assistant Professor of Religious Studies | Northwestern University
Discussant: Sajjad Nejatie, PhD | Assistant Professor of History | University of British Columbia Okanagan
Saturday, February 1, 2025 (Online – in English)
Remembering an Erased Past in Iran: The Color Black
Speaker: Beeta Baghoolizadeh, PhD | Associate Researcher Scholar | Princeton University
Discussant: Chouki El Hamel, PhD | Professor | School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies | Arizona State University
Saturday, January 18, 2025 (Online – in English)
Rumi’s Misogyny, Racism, and the Limits of Mystical Knowledge
Speaker: Mahdi Tourage, PhD | Associate Professor | King’s University College at the Western University
Discussant: Abolfazl Moshiri, PhD | Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer | Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | University of Toronto
Saturday, October 19, 2024 (Online/In-Person at UBC Robson Square – in Persian with English subtitles)
What Did the People of Iran Laugh About for 50 Years?: The Social, Cultural, and Political Role of Towfigh Satirical Paper
Speaker: Abbas Towfigh, PhD | Editor-in-Chief of Towfigh Satirical Paper
Saturday, September 28, 2024 (Online – in English)
The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India
Speaker: Alexander Jabbari, PhD | Assistant Professor | Asian and Middle Eastern Studies | University of Minnesota
Discussant: Hasan Siddiqui, PhD | Assistant Professor of South Asian History | UBC
CANCELLED
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Onomastic Reforms: Family Names and State Building in Iran
Speaker: Houchang Chehabi, PhD | Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History | Boston University
Discussant: TBD
Friday, April 5, 2024 (In-Person at UBC Robson Square – in English)
“Two Hearts / Two Solitudes”: Jahan Malek Khatun’s and Forugh Farrokhzad’s Proto-Feminist Self-Defense in Medieval and Modern Iran
Speaker: Domenico Ingenito, PhD | Associate Professor of Iranian Studies and Persian Literature | Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures | UCLA
Saturday, March 2, 2024 (Online – in English)
Twelver Shiite Martyrologies in Turkic: The Politics of Translation and Ritual in Early Modern Iran
Speaker: Ferenc Csirkés, PhD | Assistant Professor of History | University of Birmingham
Discussant: Kathryn Babayan, PhD | Professor of History | University of Michigan
Thursday, January 25, 2024 (Online – in English)
The Persianate Understanding of Japan: The Reach and Limits of Inter-Asian Exchange
Speaker: Nile Green, PhD | Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History | University of California in Los Angeles
Discussant: Aria Fani, PhD | Assistant Professor | Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Professorship in Persian and Iranian Studies | University of Washington
Saturday, December 9, 2023 (Online – in Persian)
Exploring “Liku”: Baluchi Folk Poetry’s Brief Beauty
Speaker: Mr. Mansour Alimoradi | Writer and Independent Researcher
Friday, December 1, 2023 (Online/In-Person at C.K. Choi – in English)
Intermixture in Persian Epics: The Case of Kush, the Elephant-Eared
Speaker: Alexandra Hoffmann, PhD | Assistant Professor of Classical Persian Literature and Culture | UBC
Discussant: Cameron Cross, PhD | Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies | University of Michigan (Dr. Cross will be joining on Zoom.)
Saturday, November 25, 2023 (Online – in English)
Lament of the Ages: Memory, Voice, and Experience with the Dotāris of Torbat-e Jām
Speaker: Marie Huber, PhD | Assistant Professor of Persian and Comparative Literature | Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages | Stanford University
Discussant: Domenico Ingenito, PhD | Associate Professor of Iranian Studies and Persian Literature | Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures | UCLA
Saturday, December 3, 2022 (Online – in English)
“Dressed in the Costume of His Country:” Portraits of Persians Done in the West, 1600–1842
Speaker: Daniel T. Potts, PhD, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archeology and History, New York University
Discussants: Layla Diba, PhD, Art Historian, Independent Scholar; Willem Floor, PhD, Iran Historian, Independent Scholar
Saturday, November 19, 2022 (Online – English)
Art and Spatial Politics in Iran
Speaker: Pamela Karimi, PhD, Professor of Art History & Interim Chair College of Visual and Performing Arts University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Discussant: Houchang Chehabi, PhD, Honorary Professor in the School of History of the University of St. Andrews
Friday, October 14, 2022 (UBC Robson Square – in English)
Gardens in Persian Literature: Ecology of Material and Metaphysical Beauty, from Balkh to Shiraz
Speaker: Domenico Arturo Ingenito, PhD, Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles
This talk was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
Saturday, June 18, 2022 (Online – in English)
The Impossible Gift of Sense in Rahnavard Zaryāb’s “The Snakes Under the Silverberry Trees”
Speaker: Hessam Dehghani, PhD, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Persian Language and Culture, University of British Columbia
Discussant: Mujib Mehrdad, Writer and poet, Kabul
Saturday, May 28, 2022 (Online – in English)
The Indian Connection in Hedayat’s The Blind Owl
Speaker: Marta Simidchieva, PhD, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University
Discussant: Nadeem Akhtar, PhD, Visiting Faculty of Persian, Department of History, Ashoka University
Saturday, May 14, 2022 (Online – in English)
Weaving Femininity into Mysticism: Rereading Parvīn Iʿtiṣāmī’s “God’s Weaver”
Speaker: Behnam M. Fomeshi, PhD, Research Fellow, Monash University
Discussant: Marie Huber, PhD, Assistant Professor of Persian and Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Saturday, April 2, 2022 (Online – in English)
The Persian Prison Poem from South Asia to the Caucasus: Towards an Anthology
Speakers: Rebecca Gould, PhD, Professor and Professorial Research Fellow, Islamic World and Comparative Literature, University of Birmingham; Kayvan Tahmasebian, PhD, Research Associate, GlobalLit, University of Birmingham
Discussant: Samuel Hodgkin, PhD, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University
Saturday, March 5, 2022 (Online – in English)
Molla Nasreddin of Tiflis and the Transnational Diasporic Milieu that Gave Birth to It, 1906-1931
Speaker: Janet Afary, PhD, Professor and Mellichamp Chair in Global Religion, UC Santa Barbara
Discussant: Hasan Javadi, PhD, Retired Academic, University of California, Berkeley
Saturday, February 26, 2022 (Online – in English)
The Changing Diet of the Iranians – From Quasi-Vegetarians to Quasi-Carnivores
Speaker: Willem Floor, PhD, Iran Historian
Discussant: Nader Mehravari, PhD, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University of California, Davis
Saturday, February 5, 2022 (Online – in Persian)
Representations of Ethnicity in Iranian Young Adult Fiction
Speaker: Farzaneh Aghapour, PhD, Assistant Professor of Persian Literature, University of Guilan
Discussant: Soudabeh Shokrollah-Zadeh, PhD, Assistant Professor of Education, Allameh Tabataba’i University
This talk was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
Saturday, December 18, 2021 (Online – in English and Persian)
The Hidden Story of One Thousand and One Nights in Persian: Muhammad Baghir Khurasani’s “Tarjumah Hinrīyah” Patronized in Hyderabad
Speakers: Mehdi Ganjavi, PhD – Scholar, Writer, Editor, Robarts Library, University of Toronto; Meisam Alipour, MA in Art Studies, University of Tehran; Novelist
Discussant: Pegah Shahbaz, PhD, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), Asian Institute Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto
Saturday, December 4, 2021 (Online – in English)
New Insights from the East on Poetry and Politics: The Reconciliatory Thought of Sa‘di Shirazi
Speaker: Iman Ahmadian, PhD – Research Associate, University of Newcastle
Discussant: Hessam Dehghani, PhD – Assistant Professor of Teaching, Persian Language and Culture, University of British Columbia
Saturday, November 20, 2021 (Online – in English)
Beholding Beauty: Sa‘di’s Quest for Lyric Experience and Mystical Eroticism in the Golestān and the Ghazals
Speaker: Domenico Ingenito, PhD – Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles
Discussant: Justine Landau, PhD – Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Saturday, November 6, 2021 (Online – in English)
The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran
Speaker: Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, PhD – Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
Discussant: Barrington Walker, PhD – Professor of History, Wilfrid Laurier University
Saturday, October 23, 2021 (Online – in English)
Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer and Poetry in Iran
Speaker: Niloofar Haeri, PhD – Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University
Discussant: Mahtab Sirdani, PhD Candidate – Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University
Saturday, October 16, 2021 (Online – in English)
Social Media, Music, and Poetic Worldmaking in Iranian Publics
Speaker: Nahid Siamdoust, PhD, Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Discussant: Niki Akhavan, PhD, Associate Professor, Media and Communication Studies, The Catholic University of America
Saturday, October 2, 2021 (Online – in English)
Reflections on the Story of Ali in Sunni Islam
Speaker: Nebil Husayn, PhD – Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Miami
Discussant: Javad T. Hashmi, MD – Fellow Medical Ethics, Harvard Medical School, PhD candidate in Islamic Studies, Harvard University
Saturday, September 25, 2021 (Online – in English)
Production and Circulation of Post-revolutionary Iranian Literature
Speaker: Laetitia Nanquette, PhD – Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Discussant: Amy Motlagh, PhD – Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East and South Asian Studies, University of California, Davis
Saturday, July 24, 2021 (Online – in English)
Afghans in the Persianate Age
Speaker: Naveena Naqvi, PhD, Assistant Professor, Persianate Islamic Cultures of South Asia, University of British Columbia
Saturday, May 29, 2021 (Online – in English)
Earthly or Ethereal? The Beloved in Classical Persian Poetry
Speaker: Mahdieh Vali-Zadeh, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Saturday, May 15, 2021 (Online – in English)
Iranian Women as Theatre-Makers: Witnesses and Whispers
Speaker: Marjan Moosavi, PhD, Roshan Lecturer, University of Maryland
Saturday, April 24, 2021 (Online – in English)
Literature Against Propaganda: Counter Discourse and Symbolic Resistance in Iran-Iraq War Fiction
Speaker: Salour Malayeri, PhD in Modern Languages, University of St. Andrews
Saturday, April 10, 2021 (Online – in Persian)
Intertextuality or Plagiarism? Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl from a Cognitive Poetics Lens
Speaker: Leila Sadeghi, PhD in Linguistics, University of Tehran
Saturday, March 27, 2021 (Online – in English)
Genre Fiction and Narrative Epistemologies: The Case of Detective Fiction in Persian
Speaker: Omid Azadibougar, PhD, Hunan Normal University, China
Saturday, March 13, 2021 (Online – in English)
Degenerate, Popular, and Forgotten? Politicization and Monetization of Urban Entertainment in Pahlavi Iran
Speaker: Ida Meftahi, PhD, Assistant Professor of History, Boise State University
Saturday, February 27, 2021 (Online – in English)
Social Media, Music and Poetic Worldmaking in Iranian Publics and Counterpublics
Speaker: Nahid Siamdoust, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Anthropology of Religion, Harvard Divinity School
This talk was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
Saturday, February 13, 2021 (Online – in English)
Raz-i Nuw: Hossein Alizadeh and the Possibility of a Persian Musical Modernity
Speaker: Morteza Abedinifard, PhD Candidate in Musicology, University of Alberta
Saturday, January 30, 2021 (Online – in English)
The Iranian Nightmare: Theorizing a New Iranian Horror Cinema in the (Trans) National Circuitry, 2009-2019
Speaker: Farshid Kazemi, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Simon Fraser University
Saturday, January 16, 2021 (Online – in English and Persian)
#Me_Too and the Valuing of Gendered Violence in Iran
Speakers: Ali Jenaban (Filmmaker), Elham Naeej (PhD, University of New South Wales, Australia) and Amin Pourbarghi (Filmmaker)
Saturday, December 12, 2020 (Online – in English)
Negotiating Modernity: The Prostitute Character in Iranian Film and Fiction
Speaker: Maryam Zehtabi Sabeti Mogaddam, PhD, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Saturday, November 28, 2020 (Online – in English)
Persian, Pahlavi, and Teaching Farsi
Speaker: Rastin Mehri, PhD, Lecturer at Language Training Institute, University of Simon Fraser
Saturday, November 14, 2020 (Online – in English)
Representation of Sigheh Women in Modern Iranian Cultural Productions
Speaker: Claudia Yaghoobi, PhD, Roshan Institute Associate Professor in Persian Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill
Saturday, October 31, 2020 (Online – in English)
The Poetics and Politics of Representation: A Comparative Study of “Simurgh” In Four Royal Manuscripts of the Shahnama
Speaker: Behrang Nabavi Nejad, PhD, Art History Instructor, Columbia College, Vancouver
Saturday, October 17, 2020 (Online – in English)
No Heaven For Gunga Din (1965) From Speculative Fiction to Decolonial Option
Speaker: Amirhossein Vafa, PhD, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Shiraz University
Saturday, September 26, 2020 (Online – in English)
Pondering Anti-Blackness in the Iranian Context, From Enslavement to the Present
Speaker: Amy Tahani-Bidmeshki, PhD, Assistant Professor, English Division, Pasadena City College, California
Friday, April 3, 2020 (C. K. Choi Building – in English)
The Wisdom of Love: Hafez, Goethe and World Literature
Speaker: Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani, PhD, Associate Professor of World Literature, Simon Fraser University
This talk was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
Friday, March 13, 2020 (C. K. Choi Building – in English)
Persian, Pahlavi and Teaching Farsi
Speaker: Rastin Mehri, PhD, Lecturer at Language Training Institute, University of Simon Fraser
This talk was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020 (C. K. Choi Building – in English)
Persian Munshi, Persian Jones: English Translations of Sa’di’s Gulistan from Late 18th to Mid-19th Centuries
Speaker: Pegah Shahbaz, PhD, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Asian Studies, UBC
Friday, January 31, 2020 (C. K. Choi Building – in Persian)
The Persian Influences on the Architecture of the Mugal Empire
Speaker: Razieh Rahimi, PhD in Architecture, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India
Friday, January 17, 2020 (Asian Centre Auditorium – in English)
Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Iran in the Early 20th Century
Speaker: Golbarg Rekabtalaei, PhD, Assistant Professor of History, Seton Hall University
Friday, November 29, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in English)
Civilizational Contacts between Ancient Iran and Europe during the Classical Era
Speaker: Kaveh Farrokh, PhD, Professor of History & Academic Advisor for Analytica Iranica, Methodolgica Governance University, Paris, France
Friday, November 8, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in English)
Political Economy of Oil Despotism: The Case of Post-Revolutionary Iran
Speaker: Morteza Asadi, PhD, Visiting Scholar at the School of International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC; former Assistant Professor of Economy at Kharazmi University, Tehran
Friday, October 25, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in Persian)
Iranian Art After Islam: With a Look at Some Renowned Calligraphers
Speaker: Farzan Kermani, PhD in Design, IIT Bombay
Friday, October 11, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in English)
Imagining Time in India: Persian Chroniclers and their Interpreters
Speaker: Shahzad Bashir, PhD, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University
Friday, October 4, 2019 (Asian Centre Auditorium – in English)
Zarathustra the Philosopher
Speaker: Dr. Tooraj Khodabakhshi, Dentist and Mobed (Zoroastrian Priest)
Friday, September 27, 2019 (UBC Robson Square – in English)
One Poet Among Many: Hafez and the Transregional Literary Networks of 14th-Century Iran
Speaker: Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, PhD, Associate Professor of Persian Literature, University of Oxford
Friday, September 13, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in Persian)
Loneliness and Struggle: Self-Narratives of Iranian Trans People’s Lives
Speaker: Mahsa Rad, PhD Candidate in Psychology, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran; Visiting International Research Student at UBC
Friday, March 29, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in Persian)
Classical Persian Literature as a Mirror of Past Gender Orders
Speaker: Azadeh Mokhtarnameh, PhD, Former Lecturer of Persian Language and Literature at Shiraz University, Iran
Friday, March 22, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in Persian)
The Woman through the Safavid Texts and Documents
Speaker: Nozhat Ahmadi, PhD, Associate Professor of History, University of Isfahan
Friday, March 15, 2019 (Asian Centre Auditorium – in Persian)
Articulations of Identity in the Iranian Diaspora
Speaker: Nojang Khatami, PhD Candidate, Sessional Lecturer & Vanier Scholar, Political Science, UBC
Friday, March 1, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in Persian)
I, Kambiz Sharif: A Talk and Book-Signing
Speaker: Kambiz Sharif, Sculptor
Friday, February 8, 2019 (Asian Centre Auditorium – in English and Persian)
Iranian Music After the 1979 Revolution
Amir Eslami: Musician and Composer; Former Senior Lecturer at Tehran University of Art, along with musician Hamin Honari.
Friday, January 25, 2019 (C.K. Choi Building – in English)
Parviz Tanavoli: Poetry in Bronze (Film Screening/Q&A)
Documentary screening, followed by Q&A between the director and the artist; Terrence Turner: Canadian filmmaker; Parviz Tanavoli: Iranian-Canadian sculptor.
Friday, January 16, 2019 (Jack Poole Hall, Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre – in English)
Modernizing the Persian Masterpiece, Shahnameh
Artist Hamid Rahmanian explains how he turned Shahnameh into an art book, audio-book, pop-up and play.
Thursday, November 8, 2018 (Asian Centre Auditorium – in Persian)
On Declining and Desiring Nostalgia
Speaker: Mohsen Namjoo, Iranian Singer – Songwriter, Music Scholar and Setar (traditional Persian lute) player currently based in New York City, invited to UBC by the Asian Studies Department and UBC Persian Club.
