Dr. Mostafa Abedinifard is Assistant Professor of Modern Persian Literature and Culture in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, where he has been organizing the Alireza Ahmadian Lectures in Iranian and Persianate Studies since 2018. Dr. Abedinifard holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, an MA in English Language and Literature, and a BA in English Literature. Before rejoining the Department of Asian Studies in his current position, Mostafa served as Assistant Professor Without Review of Persian Literary Culture and Civilization (2018–2022), prior to which he was an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto (2017–2018 [awarded for the duration of 2017–2019]). A literary and cultural critic and historian with a passion for modern Iranian and Persianate literatures and cultures (roughly from mid-19th century onward), within his broader interests in comparative and world literature, Mostafa has a diverse range of teaching and research interests. (For a list of his interests, please see below.)

Dr. Abedinifard’s co-edited volume Persian Literature as World Literature was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2021. In 2018, he co-edited the first collection of articles (in Persian and English) on the topic of “Iranian Masculinities,” published as a special issue at Iran Namag. Currently, while advancing two monograph projects—Fictional Masculinities and Self-Deprecating Modernity—Mostafa is co-editing two special issues, one titled “Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora” (with Dr. Maryam Zehtabi Sabeti Moqaddam), and the other tentatively titled “The Legacy of Iraj Pezeshkzad as a Modern Iranian Satirist” (with Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi), respectively for Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies and Iran Namag. Earlier forms of his arguments in his monograph project Fictional Masculinities have already appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, while one of the arguments in his second monograph project Self-Deprecating Modernity was recently published as an article, titled “Iran’s ‘Self-Deprecating Modernity’: Toward Decolonizing Collective Self-Critique,” in The International Journal of Middle East Studies. Mostafa is the Principal Investigator and Editor-in-Chief of the ongoing digital humanities encyclopedic project Middle East Humour: A Digital Docent (send him an e-mail if you are interested in contributing to this encyclopedic project) and Co-Investigator of a forthcoming exciting research project on music, literature and culture in the “greater Iran” and beyond.

Dr. Abedinifard also has further articles, book chapters, and book reviews published/forthcoming in Persian or English in a variety of areas, including Persian literature, comparative literature, Iranian cinema, Iranian folklore, Persian music, Iranian diaspora literature, Kurdish poetry, Iranian masculinities studies, and Qur’anic studies, in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals, such as Asian Cinema; The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies; HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research; Social Semiotics; de genere: Journal of Literary, Postcolonial and Gender Studies; Iran Nameh: A Quarterly of Iranian Studies; Literary Criticism (Tehran); Mahoor Music Quarterly (Tehran); American historical Review; Iranian Studies; Journal of Men’s Studies; Cultural Sociology; Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics; The European Journal of Humor Research; New Directions in Folklore; and The Forum for Inter-American Research.

More details on Mostafa’s research projects as well as copies of some of his publications may be accessed here. Dr. Abedinifard currently serves on the Editorial Boards of Iran Namag; Journal of Men’s Studies; folklor/edebiyat; and Humor: International Journal of Humor Research.

Research Interests in Iranian and Persianate Studies

• fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction; folk narratives; popular culture; humour and satire
• (global South) literary theory
• literary histories; history of ideas & emotions
• critical diversity studies (gender and sexuality; race; masculinities)
• comparative studies of literature; literature as world literature
• diaspora literatures and cultures
• food/cuisine, wellbeing, and environmental sustainability
• ethnomusicology
• scriptures as literature

Welcoming especially inter- and trans-disciplinary as well as archival research projects in literature and culture, Dr. Abedinifard is currently accepting, to advise or co-advise, a limited number of MA students with shared interests who wish to advance their research in Iranian and Persianate studies within an “area,” “comparative” or “global” studies framework, focusing on literary and cultural texts from any or a combination of the following areas, with primary texts in original language and/or English translation: (All proposal material as well as any submitted research by students must be rendered in written English, with quotes from any original language appearing both in original and English at all stages of the development of the research.) (For detailed information about the Master’s (MA) Program in the Department of Asian Studies, please see here.)

• Iran (Persian—as well as Azeri; Kurdish; Arabic; Turkmen; Balochi; Gilaki; etc.)
• Afghanistan (especially Dari and Pashto)
• Tajikistan (Tajik [Latin/Cyrillic/Arabic scripts])
• Pakistan (Urdu)
• India (Gujarati and Hindi-Urdu)
• their diasporas