Statement on Academic Freedom

The first step in the process of transformation is to listen and learn

The Department of Asian Studies stands in solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) on the UBC campus, in Canada, on this continent, and around the world in their demands for an end to systemic racism and racialized violence. At this watershed moment when the deaths of Black and Indigenous people like Eishia Hudson, Breonna Taylor, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, George Floyd, and Jason Collins at the hands of police in Canada and the U.S. have brought renewed calls for justice, we commit to undertaking new initiatives to reflect on our particular connections to anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and, on the basis of that reflection, make necessary changes.

Our department has long been committed to examining issues of Orientalism, colonialism, anti-Asian racism, and the complicated triangulations in relations between Black, Asian, Indigenous, and white communities at particular historical moments. We have made significant progress from a faculty cohort that was majority white a decade ago to a faculty cohort that is majority POC at all levels today. However, we have fallen short in attention to Indigenous issues, and in other important areas such as the recruiting of Black and Indigenous faculty members, and the recruiting and retention of Black and Indigenous students, both undergraduate and graduate.

Recognizing our shortcomings in the area of Indigeneity, we last year voted to approve a department initiative to foreground issues around Indigeneity in Asian Studies through a transformation of our curriculum supported by public events such as a film and lecture series; now is the time to add to that a commitment to transformation that will address historic and present-day structural inequalities vis-à-vis Black communities as well.

Those of us whose academic study and teaching focuses on the various regions of Asia engage with race and Indigeneity on at least three levels:

– considering race relations and the issues of Indigenous and marginalized peoples in the countries/regions we teach about and research;

– considering configurations of race at the times and places when and where our regional disciplines were created (such as the roots of Japanese Studies in the Occupation of Japan after WWII and the subsequent Cold War; or of South Asian Studies in the British Raj) and the ways those regional disciplines have been permanently affected by those specific histories;

– considering the current structure and practices of our field in North America.

In consultation with faculty, students, staff, and other members of our community, we will actively pursue ways of incorporating these three levels of engagement toward the goal of understanding where we (as individuals and as a department) are now, how we got here, and what needs to be done in our specific context to eliminate structures, practices, and implicit beliefs that exclude and endanger Black and Indigenous people. Among our concrete actions in the immediate future will be: fundraising for bursaries and prizes directed at Black and Indigenous graduate students; pledging that at least 30% and preferably 50% of department-funded invited speakers each year are from marginalized communities; holding anti-racism and anti-oppression training and workshops with all department members, including training in anti-racist pedagogy for all TAs; further transforming the curriculum to enhance attention to racial injustice beyond our current purview, beginning with a regular seminar series in the 2020 Winter session in which we explore ways of integrating marginalized voices and histories into our current courses; reviewing department policies and practices regarding employment equity, representation, inclusion, and racial justice; and continuing to support the student associations affiliated with our department to ensure resources are available to foster safe and inclusive spaces free from discrimination and harassment. We recognize that these actions must constitute only the first stage of a comprehensive, long-term plan to promote inclusivity, equity, and anti-racist action in all aspects of our department.

In addition, we echo the sentiments in the statements condemning anti-Black racism issued by the Modern Language Association, and the Association for Asian Studies.

The first step in the process of transformation is to listen and learn. Accordingly, we here offer a short list of resources at UBC and beyond. We are also constructing a list of resources, articles, and scholarship that specifically address Black and Indigenous issues in Asia, racial injustice issues specific to Asia, or the triangulations of Black, white, and racialized Asian diasporic communities, which can be found here on this website.

Resources at UBC

Resources beyond UBC

The Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference (MURC) is Accepting Applications!

Creating Community – Persian Language and Iranian Studies at UBC

How three Persian students initiated a new program and created a vibrant community

When Arian Zand was 19, his family emigrated from Iran to Canada. He had just finished high school. He left behind not just a community, but an entire worldview, much of it formed by the literature he’d grown up with. “I was worried about losing connection,” he says. “Persian poetry is an inseparable part of Iranian culture.”

Arian Zand. 4th year UBC Student in front of the Asian Centre.

“Part of my identity… has been informed by all of these poems, all of these stories, all of this prose, all of these narratives.”

Now in his fourth year at UBC as a political science and international relations honours student, he sees his world shifting. “Now that I’m living on campus, I’m less in touch with the Persian-speaking community [in Vancouver]. I spend a lot of time reading in English. My friends, for the most part, are non-Farsi speaking.” He knows that the less time he spends speaking and reading in his native language, the less he will understand that mindset. “My perspective of the world has been formed to a huge degree by an Iranian way thinking. Without that I think I’ll have a lot less insight into the world.”

This is why he decided to take ASIA 392 – Classical Persian Literature in English Translation in the UBC Department of Asian Studies, which he describes as “a rare and unique opportunity.”

These courses would not exist if it weren’t for the help of three Persian students who are now alumni: Negar Jalali (BA ’11, JD ’15), Bahador Moosavi (BASc ’07, MASc ’12) and Alireza Ahmadian (BA ’11).

In 2011, Asian Studies department head Ross King sought out these three students to help him create a Persian program within the department. Ross explains, “Vancouver is home to a significant and growing population of Iranian Canadians, and UBC attracts a large and growing number of students from Iran. In such a context and for the sake of improved intercultural understanding and awareness, UBC needs to be teaching Persian language and Iranian studies for its diverse student body.”

Negar, Bahador, and Alireza were all instrumental in rallying the Persian community in support of establishing a Persian language program at UBC, starting with foundational language courses and expanding to include cultural courses, like the newly offered ASIA 460 – Modern Iranian Women and Men in Narrative. The program now offers seven language and four culture courses.

“We are extremely grateful for the enthusiastic support, both moral and material, that we have received from Iranian Canadians in Vancouver—including UBC students, alumni, friends of UBC and Persophiles more generally,” says Ross. Rallying the local Iranian community in support of a common goal is just one of the benefits of the program, which Ross sees as critical to the university “because of the centrality of the Persian language, literature and literary culture for more than a thousand years to Western, Central and South Asia.” It’s become beneficial to heritage and non-heritage students alike.

Andi Jordan, another fourth-year honours student, says that “despite the fact that I’m majoring in international relations, I have had little exposure to Middle Eastern affairs and culture.” Her desire to take Classical Persian Literature was almost the inverse of Arian’s, wanting to expose herself “to different ways of thinking.”

Mobina Fathi, a second-year biology student, is taking ASIA 394 – Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema. Like Arian, she also immigrated to Canada from Iran, and has at times felt isolated in classrooms where she is often the only student of Persian heritage. But in this class, “I feel safe,” she says. The instructor is Persian. “He is in that community. He knows that background,” she says.

It’s that isolation on campus that Alireza wants to address. “During my education, I noticed a lack of mentors for Persian studies and Persian heritage students at UBC. This lack was in the face of a real need that I think is unique to this particular community/diaspora of UBC students,” he says. He and his alumni peers started an informal events and Facebook group, where members of the Persian community would share their experiences at UBC. Alumni groups like this are usually organized around a faculty or a specific subject, but this group was rare in that it was focused on a single culture.

The culmination of these events and meetings happened in April, when the alumni group hosted its first formal networking event. The speakers included alumni from a variety of fields.

The group’s vision is to be an active and successful Iranian UBC alumni community that’s connected across professions and industries. It’s an inclusive group—all are welcome, whether people who have Iranian ties through their heritage and language, friends, cultural and business partners, or even shared interest in Iranian culture and issues.

In the future, the group hopes to advance professional opportunities for new graduates through networking, inter-community engagement, and mentorship.

Arian is grateful to be able to take these courses connected to his heritage, an option he’s thankful to see for his Asian Studies counterparts of different heritage as well.

“It’s important to have an option to explore what your heritage can offer you. Heritage is a very broad word, encompassing philosophy, worldview, economics, politics, society, literature—all of these things,” he says. And now, like Negar, Alireza, and Bahador before him, it includes a community too.

There has never been a better time to champion Persian language and Iranian studies at UBC. Help inspire students to become innovative leaders and global citizens who understand the complex background and rich history of Iran by donating. Learn more.

Written by Joel Bentley with interviews by Areeka Riaz and Katie Hoang

Alireza Ahmadian Lectures in Iranian and Persianate Studies

Department of Asian Studies

University of British Columbia

نسخه فارسی

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

2025

Saturday, April 12, 2025 (In-Person at UBC Robson Square)

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

Statement on Academic Freedom

Resources at UBC

Resources beyond UBC

Department of Asian Studies

University of British Columbia

All events are free and open to the public.

Upcoming Lectures

Past Lectures List

2025

Anxious Onlookers: Qajar Iran, Tipu Sultan of Mysore and British colonial expansion, 1797-1800

Translating Persian, Universalizing Islam: The Case of Rumi’s “Moses and the Shepherd”

Debating Islam at the Court of the Great Mughal

Remembering an Erased Past in Iran: The Color Black

Rumi’s Misogyny, Racism, and the Limits of Mystical Knowledge

2024

What Did the People of Iran Laugh About for 50 Years?: The Social, Cultural, and Political Role of Towfigh Satirical Paper

The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India

Onomastic Reforms: Family Names and State Building in Iran

“Two Hearts / Two Solitudes”: Jahan Malek Khatun’s and Forugh Farrokhzad’s Proto-Feminist Self-Defense in Medieval and Modern Iran

Twelver Shiite Martyrologies in Turkic: The Politics of Translation and Ritual in Early Modern Iran

The Persianate Understanding of Japan: The Reach and Limits of Inter-Asian Exchange

2023

Exploring “Liku”: Baluchi Folk Poetry’s Brief Beauty

Intermixture in Persian Epics: The Case of Kush, the Elephant-Eared

Lament of the Ages: Memory, Voice, and Experience with the Dotāris of Torbat-e Jām

2022

“Dressed in the Costume of His Country:” Portraits of Persians Done in the West, 1600–1842

Art and Spatial Politics in Iran

Gardens in Persian Literature: Ecology of Material and Metaphysical Beauty, from Balkh to Shiraz

The Impossible Gift of Sense in Rahnavard Zaryāb’s “The Snakes Under the Silverberry Trees”

The Indian Connection in Hedayat’s The Blind Owl

Weaving Femininity into Mysticism: Rereading Parvīn Iʿtiṣāmī’s “God’s Weaver”

The Persian Prison Poem from South Asia to the Caucasus: Towards an Anthology

Molla Nasreddin of Tiflis and the Transnational Diasporic Milieu that Gave Birth to It, 1906-1931

The Changing Diet of the Iranians – From Quasi-Vegetarians to Quasi-Carnivores

Representations of Ethnicity in Iranian Young Adult Fiction

2021

The Hidden Story of One Thousand and One Nights in Persian: Muhammad Baghir Khurasani’s “Tarjumah Hinrīyah” Patronized in Hyderabad

New Insights from the East on Poetry and Politics: The Reconciliatory Thought of Sa‘di Shirazi

Beholding Beauty: Sa‘di’s Quest for Lyric Experience and Mystical Eroticism in the Golestān and the Ghazals

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer and Poetry in Iran

Social Media, Music, and Poetic Worldmaking in Iranian Publics

Reflections on the Story of Ali in Sunni Islam

Production and Circulation of Post-revolutionary Iranian Literature

Afghans in the Persianate Age

Earthly or Ethereal? The Beloved in Classical Persian Poetry

Iranian Women as Theatre-Makers: Witnesses and Whispers

Literature Against Propaganda: Counter Discourse and Symbolic Resistance in Iran-Iraq War Fiction

Intertextuality or Plagiarism? Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl from a Cognitive Poetics Lens

Genre Fiction and Narrative Epistemologies: The Case of Detective Fiction in Persian

Degenerate, Popular, and Forgotten? Politicization and Monetization of Urban Entertainment in Pahlavi Iran

Social Media, Music and Poetic Worldmaking in Iranian Publics and Counterpublics

Raz-i Nuw: Hossein Alizadeh and the Possibility of a Persian Musical Modernity

The Iranian Nightmare: Theorizing a New Iranian Horror Cinema in the (Trans) National Circuitry, 2009-2019

#Me_Too and the Valuing of Gendered Violence in Iran

2020

Negotiating Modernity: The Prostitute Character in Iranian Film and Fiction

Persian, Pahlavi, and Teaching Farsi

Representation of Sigheh Women in Modern Iranian Cultural Productions

The Poetics and Politics of Representation: A Comparative Study of “Simurgh” In Four Royal Manuscripts of the Shahnama

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

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

The Wisdom of Love: Hafez, Goethe and World Literature

Persian, Pahlavi and Teaching Farsi

Persian Munshi, Persian Jones: English Translations of Sa’di’s Gulistan from Late 18th to Mid-19th Centuries

The Persian Influences on the Architecture of the Mugal Empire

Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Iran in the Early 20th Century

2019

Civilizational Contacts between Ancient Iran and Europe during the Classical Era

Political Economy of Oil Despotism: The Case of Post-Revolutionary Iran

Iranian Art After Islam: With a Look at Some Renowned Calligraphers

Imagining Time in India: Persian Chroniclers and their Interpreters

Zarathustra the Philosopher

One Poet Among Many: Hafez and the Transregional Literary Networks of 14th-Century Iran

Loneliness and Struggle: Self-Narratives of Iranian Trans People’s Lives

Classical Persian Literature as a Mirror of Past Gender Orders

The Woman through the Safavid Texts and Documents

Articulations of Identity in the Iranian Diaspora

I, Kambiz Sharif: A Talk and Book-Signing

One Poet Among Many: Hafez and the Transregional Literary Networks of 14^th-Century Iran