Stanford Iranian Studies Program
By Stanford Iranian Studies Program
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Description
The Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies fosters the interdisciplinary study of Iran as a civilization. Each academic year, the Program offers undergraduate courses related to Iran in such disciplines as language, literature, economics, and political science. It provides a wealth of events for scholars, students and the general public, which include conferences, symposia, forums, lectures and performances. Listen to one of our podcasts or check out our youtube channel to discover Iran!
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Book Talk: Ahmad Shamlou, Behind the Mirror | October 5, 2023 Speaker: Bahram Grami A book talk about the acclaimed Iranian poet, Ahmad Shamlou, with Dr. Bahram Grami. Event is in Persian and was organized on Oct. 5, 2023. “The book 'Ahmad Shamlou, Behind the Mirror' is not a literary criticism, it is a step toward better knowing Ahmad Shamlou based on reliable sources. It is not a documentary for promoting or defaming him. While Shamlou should be appreciated and praised for his great poetical works, his character and social life is studied because he has been a role model for young generations. This book contrasts with his statement, ‘I live in a glass house and have nothing to hide.’” Bahram Grami was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. He studied at Tehran University, American University of Beirut and University of Manitoba, Canada, where he received his PhD in plant science and genetics. He served as assistant professor in Iran until he left for the United States in 1985 and became a researcher at the University of California, Davis. His recent work includes the 2022 edition of Flowers and Plants in a Thousand Years of Persian Poetry. He has taught in Hong Kong, Bahrain and China, and has been a consulting editor for flora with the Encyclopedia Iranica. | 10/5/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Mohammad Reza Shajarian Records Singing with Hagia Sophia Acoustics | In 2014, Maestro Mohammad Reza Shajarian visited Stanford University. In collaboration with Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), he recorded a few test sessions using virtual acoustics of the Hagia Sophia. Recording and production of audio and video were made possible by the CCRMA team and the Icons of Sound Project. To watch the video recording of these test sessions, please visit our YouTube channel. | 9/6/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Parliamentary Politics and Iran-US Relations During the Cold War | June 1, 2023 Speaker: Tomoyo Chisaka The second Zahedi Family Fellow lecture by the Spring 2023 Zahedi Fellow, Dr. Tomoyo Chisaka. Influential literature on Iran-US relations has assessed economic and security issues as having profound impacts on the rise and fall of Mohammad Reza Shah. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the ways that Iran's domestic institutions, particularly parliamentary politics, influenced the nature of bilateral relations. Findings from the Ardeshir Zahedi papers housed in Hoover Library and Archives and the US National Security Archives indicate that even though the Shah and the US were close allies, parliamentary elections provided a space for the US to contact “moderate” opposition who tried to challenge the Shah’s dictatorship by participating in electoral politics. This communication was facilitated by US concerns about fighting communism within the context of the Cold War, in part because Iran’s opposition knew that only US advocacy would encourage the Shah to co-opt them in parliament in an otherwise illiberal authoritarian environment. A closer look at parliamentary elections in Iran during the Shah’s regime offers important insights into the ways that domestic politics interacted with Iran-US relations, with implications for Iran’s political development. Dr. Tomoyo Chisaka joined the Iranian Studies Program as the second Zahedi Family Fellow in spring of 2023. Dr. Chisaka is a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo, Japan. She was a visiting scholar at the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University during the 2022-2023 academic year. Her dissertation examined parliamentary election management in post-revolutionary Iran. Focusing on the legal functions of the Ministry of Interior and the Guardian Council, the dissertation considered when and how Iran’s Supreme Leader delegates autonomy to the executive headed by the President as related to the management of parliamentary elections. | 6/1/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Women, Art, Freedom: Women Artists & Street Politics in Iran by Pamela Karimi | May 11, 2023 Speakers: Pamela Karimi Discussion with Dr. Pamela Karimi about the work of several prominent contemporary women artists and their courageous acts of political activism in the streets of Iran. Following the tragic murder of Mahsa Amini, Iranian women took to the streets in large numbers to protest. Their bodies were the focus of these demonstrations, with women dancing and spinning their headscarves or anonymous activists installing protest banners or using sanitary pads to cover surveillance cameras in order to prevent state authorities from imposing conservative dress codes on women. The courageous presence of women in public spaces has been a crucial aspect of this revolution, with many instances of women's political activism on the streets taking on characteristics of art production. By entering the realm of visuality and sense-experience, traditionally assigned to art and aesthetics, activism has taken on performative dimensions. However, the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising is not the only manifestation of such involvement. For over three decades, Iranian women artists (and, by extension, activists as artists) have engaged in public art activism, creating moments of rupture in everyday life without necessarily declaring an overt political stance. These artists have used guerilla-style tactics such as painting graffiti, playful drifting, and occupying empty urban spaces to assert their right to the city and challenge strict urban regulations. Such innovative practices in busy urban areas are more challenging for women artists than their male counterparts. This presentation highlights the work of several prominent contemporary women artists who have questioned the limitations of public life for women, demanded freedom of expression, and reclaimed the streets through their creative and courageous interventions. Pamela Karimi received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and is currently a professor at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Karimi is the author of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran (Routledge, 2013) and Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art & Critical Spatial Practice (Stanford, 2022). She is the co-editor of The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East: From Napoleon to ISIS, a collection of important essays published at the height of ISIS attacks on cultural heritage. Karimi has held fellowships from many organizations, including the College Art Association, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and Iran Heritage Foundation at SOAS. More recently Karimi was the co-recipient of a major grant from the Connecting Art Histories Initiative at the Getty Foundation. Co-founder of Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, Karimi currently serves on the boards of Thresholds Journal (MIT Press) and the Association of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey. | 5/11/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Never Invisible: An Iranian Woman’s Life Across the Twentieth Century | May 2, 2023 Speakers: Ladan Lari, Leila Pourhashemi, Abbas Milani, Kioumars Ghereghlou A discussion about "Never Invisible: An Iranian Woman’s Life Across the Twentieth Century" (Mage Publishers, 2023). Houri Mostofi Moghadam was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1919, descended on her mother’s side from Iranian royalty and on her father’s from a “God-fearing” family of scholars and government administrators. When she was twenty-two, Houri married Mohsen Moghadam, a young man from a merchant family who went on to become a successful businessman, often traveling abroad, while Houri dedicated herself to teaching, charitable public works, and running international women’s associations in Tehran. Together, they also raised three children, in whom Houri was keen to instill the same spirit of industry and self-discipline she had learned from her own parents. Houri was among the first women to go to university in Iran, working as a teacher for nearly forty years and diligently continuing with her own education in later life, including traveling to the U.S. as a Fulbright Scholar, and, after being forced into exile following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, studying for a PhD at the Sorbonne in Paris. From a privileged social class, with a glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle, Houri was a pioneer, nonetheless, and a feminist for her own time. Through her hard work and frequent acts of bravery—from standing up to sinister intruders to dogged persistence in the face of intransigent officialdom—she made sure that, as a woman, she was never overlooked, never invisible, even when hidden under a dark chador at the Revolutionary Court. It was women like Houri who were the precursors of the young women fighting for equal rights and justice in Iran today. The resulting memoir tells the fascinating story of her life, with all its ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, set against the backdrop of an impending revolution that would topple the world she and her family had always known and turn it upside down. In this video, Houri’s daughter, Ladan Lari, and granddaughter, Leila Pourhashemi, discuss Houri’s life and work, and the extraordinary commitment Houri’s daughter, Mariam Safinia, undertook to make the publication of this memoir possible. Dr. Kioumars Ghereghlou and Dr. Abbas Milani discuss the importance of the Houri Moghadam archival collection at Stanford, her life in historical perspective, and the process of creating and publishing the memoir. Conversation is in English and is moderated by Stanford Stein Visiting Writer Laleh Khadivi. | 5/2/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Challenges and Prospects for Dynamic Entrepreneurship in Iran’s Transition to Democracy | April 21, 2023 A conversation with prominent Iranian-American business leaders Faraj Aalaei, Siavash Alamouti, Fay Arjomandi, Afsaneh Beschloss, Hamid Moghadam, and Shane Tedjarati about the role of dynamic entrepreneurship, the role of women in the future economy, and the impact of the Iranian diaspora on the transition to a future democratic Iran. The conference was moderated by Dr. Abbas Milani and held April 21, 2023 at Stanford University. Part of the Iranian Studies series "Prospects and Challenges for Transition to Democracy in Iran": https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/initiatives/series-prospects-and-challenges-transition-democracy-iran SPEAKERS: Faraj Aalaei, an Iranian American immigrant and a 40-year veteran of the communications industry, is currently the Founding Managing Partner at Candou Ventures. As an entrepreneur Mr. Aalaei has raised several hundred million dollars for his semiconductor companies from private and public investors, executed several M&A deals and as CEO has taken two previous start-ups, Centillium and Aquantia, through IPO. Siavash Alamouti is an Iranian American scientist and entrepreneur. He has held senior executive positions in many Fortune 100 and startup companies, and is currently Executive Chairman of the Board at mimik Technology in Oakland, California. Mr. Alamouti was awarded the prestigious Marconi Prize (also known as the Nobel Prize in Communications) in 2022. He is most known as the inventor of the Alamouti Code used in billions of wireless devices. Fay Arjomandi is the founder and CEO of mimik, the pioneering hybrid edge cloud (HEC) company and has held executive positions in telecom, digital health, software, and augmented reality enterprises. Ms. Arjomandi is also a serial entrepreneur, investor, advisor, author, and advocate for women in tech and equality. She was recognized as one of the most influential women in Silicon Valley by San Francisco Business Week in 2014, was named the Edge Woman of the year in 2020 by the Linux Foundation, and received the Canadian Top 20 Tech Titans Award in 2022. Afsaneh Beschloss is an economist and leader in the private, public, and multilateral sectors and has focused her career on harnessing the power of sustainable finance to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. A pioneer in climate policy and investments, Ms. Beschloss is the founder and CEO of RockCreek, one of the largest diverse-owned investment firms. The executive roles she has held, including the Treasurer and Chief Investment Officer of the World Bank, has enabled her to work closely with central banks and advise governments and regulatory agencies on global public policy, financial policy, as well as renewable energy. Hamid Moghadam is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Prologis, the global leader in logistics real estate and a member of the S&P 100. He is a Trustee Emeritus of Stanford University and currently serves on the boards of Stanford Management Company, Stanford Health Care and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, he is a recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. In its latest ranking, Harvard Business Review voted him as the #17 Best Performing CEO in the world. Shane Tedjarati is the founder, chairman and CEO of the Tribridge Group, a global investment group applying leading technologies to global megatrends. Mr. Tedjarati was a former president and CEO of the Global High Growth Regions in Honeywell International Inc. He is also a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and the co-founder of its Middle East Leadership Initiative and China Fellowship Program. He is a member of the advisory board of Antai College of Economics and Management and the industry co-chair of China Leaders for Global Operations of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. | 4/21/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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From Esther to Persepolis: Harbingers of Woman, Life, Freedom | March 25, 2023 Speakers: Mahnaz Afkhami, Homa Sarshar, and Marjane Satrapi A discussion with Ms. Mahnaz Afkhami, Ms. Homa Sarshar, and Ms. Marjane Satrapi, moderated by Dr. Mandana Zandian as a part of the conference "Dialogues on Iran's Transition to Secular Democracy" co-hosted by Stanford Iranian Studies, Gozar.org, and KAI on March 25-26, 2023 at Stanford University. Mahnaz Afkhami is a women's rights activist and author. Homa Sarshar is a journalist, writer, and human rights activist. Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian artist and director. With more than 30+ panel talks, 24 roundtables, 50+ speakers, and more than 100+ experts and civil society activists, the conference explored challenges and pathways of transitioning from the Islamic Republic regime in Iran to a secular democracy. Inspired by the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, the conference convened a diverse set of thought-leaders, experts, and civil society activists to support dialogue and discourse around the establishment of a new democratic system of governance in Iran. Learn more about the conference: https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/events/conference-dialogues-irans-transition-secular-democracy | 3/25/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Pacted Transitions and Applications to Iran | March 17, 2023 Speakers: Hicham Alaoui A discussion with Dr. Hicham Alaoui (Hicham Alaoui Foundation) and Dr. Abbas Milani (Stanford Iranian Studies) in March of 2023. Part of the conference "Dialogues on Iran's Transition to Secular Democracy" co-hosted by Stanford Iranian Studies, Gozar.org, and KAI on March 25-26, 2023 at Stanford University. Dr. Alaoui is the Director of the Hicham Alaoui Foundation Dr. Abbas Milani is the faculty director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University. With more than 30+ panel talks, 24 roundtables, 50+ speakers, and more than 100+ experts and civil society activists, the conference explored challenges and pathways of transitioning from the Islamic Republic regime in Iran to a secular democracy. Inspired by the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, the conference convened a diverse set of thought-leaders, experts, and civil society activists to support dialogue and discourse around the establishment of a new democratic system of governance in Iran. Learn more about the conference: https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/events/conference-dialogues-irans-transition-secular-democracy | 3/17/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Challenges of Iran's Transition in Comparative Perspective | March 16, 2023 Speakers: Larry Diamond, Michael McFaul, Abbas Milani A discussion with Professor Larry Diamond (Political Science, Stanford) and Professor Michael McFaul (FSI, Stanford), moderated by Dr. Abbas Milani (Stanford Iranian Studies) in March of 2023. Part of the conference "Dialogues on Iran's Transition to Secular Democracy" co-hosted by Stanford Iranian Studies, Gozar.org, and KAI on March 25-26, 2023 at Stanford University. Professor Larry Diamond is the Mosbacher Senior Fellow of Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. Professor Michael McFaul is the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Dr. Abbas Milani is the faculty director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University. With more than 30+ panel talks, 24 roundtables, 50+ speakers, and more than 100+ experts and civil society activists, the conference explored challenges and pathways of transitioning from the Islamic Republic regime in Iran to a secular democracy. Inspired by the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, the conference convened a diverse set of thought-leaders, experts, and civil society activists to support dialogue and discourse around the establishment of a new democratic system of governance in Iran. Learn more about the conference: https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/events/conference-dialogues-irans-transition-secular-democracy | 3/16/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Human Rights Data Collection for Judicial Processes in Iran's Transition to Secular Democracy | March 15, 2023 Speakers: Allen Weiner, Bailey Ulbricht A discussion with Professor Allen Weiner (Stanford Law School) and Bailey Ulbricht (Stanford Humanitarian Program), moderated by Dr. Abbas Milani (Stanford Iranian Studies) in March of 2023. Part of the conference "Dialogues on Iran's Transition to Secular Democracy" co-hosted by Stanford Iranian Studies, Gozar.org, and KAI on March 25-26, 2023 at Stanford University. Professor Allen Weiner is the director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law and the director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. Bailey Ulbricht is Executive Director of the Stanford Humanitarian Program at the Stanford Law School. Dr. Abbas Milani is the faculty director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University. With more than 30+ panel talks, 24 roundtables, 50+ speakers, and more than 100+ experts and civil society activists, the conference explored challenges and pathways of transitioning from the Islamic Republic regime in Iran to a secular democracy. Inspired by the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, the conference convened a diverse set of thought-leaders, experts, and civil society activists to support dialogue and discourse around the establishment of a new democratic system of governance in Iran. | 3/15/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Panel Discussion of Norooz (Persian New Year) | March 14, 2023 Speakers: Mojdeh Shamsaie, Shervin Emami, Abbas Milani, Donya Nasser Panel discussion of Norooz/Persian New Year, hosted by the Stanford Iranian Studies Program and the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program at Stanford in March 2023. Ms. Mojdeh Shamsaie, Professor Shervin Emami, and Professor Abbas Milani discuss the history and importance of Norooz, how it is celebrated in Iran and around the world, and the challenges it faces in Iran today. Conversation moderated by Stanford MS Health Policy student Donya Nasser. | 3/14/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Amplifying Iranian Women with Voice AI with Iran Davar Ardalan | March 9, 2023 Speaker: Iran Davar Ardalan Iran Davar Ardalan discusses the innovative and new Voice AI experience “Freedom Speaks.” This project honors Iranian women using powerful art such as poems, music and more from the past & present—all accessible through Alexa's voice command “Alexa, open Freedom Speaks." Ms. Ardalan also explains how others can be part of an exciting conversation about pushing forward language capabilities by making datasets available in Persian so that even more voices can have true power. Iran Davar Ardalan is the executive producer of "Freedom Speaks," a voice AI on Amazon Alexa that shares inspiring stories by Iranian women. Ardalan is a senior advisor to Women in Voice, a global non-profit creating women leaders in conversational AI. Ardalan is also National Geographic's executive producer of audio, where she oversees the award-winning podcast series, "Overheard,” the narrative limited series "Into the Depths" as well as new forays into spatial audio via Nat Geo's Soundbank. In September 2022, Ardalan presented “Sounds Like National Geographic” at the Voice2022 summit in Arlington, VA, talking about the future of voice AI as a keeper of wisdom and knowledge of nature and history and culture. Prior to this, Ardalan was deputy director of the Presidential Innovation Fellowship Program in Washington D.C. and before that a veteran journalist at NPR News for two decades. In May 2014, Davar was the recipient of an Ellis Island Medal of Honor, for individual achievement and for promoting cultural unity. In Fall 2021, through her work at IVOW, (Intelligent Voices of Wisdom) Ardalan launched a conversational AI scholar on Google Assistant to preserve the wisdom and work of her late mother, Islamic scholar, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar into 21st century voice technology. | 3/9/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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What the Failure of Local Democracy in Iran tells about Islamist Authoritarianism by Kian Tajbakhsh | March 2, 2023 Speakers: Kian Tajbakhsh Author Kian Tajbakhsh discussed his most recent book, "Creating Local Democracy in Iran: State Building and the Politics of Decentralization." With a combination of historical, political, and financial field research, it explores the multifaceted dimensions of local power and how various ideologically opposed actors shaped local government as an integral component of authoritarian state building. The Q&A session includes Dr. Abbas Milani (director of Iranian Studies Program at Stanford) and Dr. Michael A. McFaul, (director of Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies). *The audio quality improves in the first 20 seconds of the talk. Kian Tajbakhsh (Ph.D. Columbia 1993) is a Senior Advisor at Columbia Global. In this role, Dr. Tajbakhsh works on university-wide initiatives focused on global migration and is the Coordinator of the Committee on Forced Migration. He is also a Fellow with Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought where since 2017 he has taught the core course in the Global Thought MA program “Globalization and the Problems of World Order.” From 2016-2018 he was Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia. His book Creating Local Democracy In Iran: State-Building and the Politics of Decentralization was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Before joining Columbia, Tajbakhsh worked for fifteen years as an international expert in urban policy and local government reform; democracy and human rights promotion. Reflecting his commitment to democracy and human rights, Tajbakhsh was the Open Society (Soros) Foundation’s representative in Iran in the 2000s, where he directed several initiatives aimed at strengthening civil society. Tajbakhsh was among the pro-democracy activists arrested and detained by the Iranian government during the Green Movement protests in 2009 and released as part of the 2016 Iran/P5+1 Nuclear Deal. | 3/2/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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A Discussion with Mohsen Yalfani | February 17, 2023 Speakers: Mohsen Yalfani, Shabnam Tolouei A discussion with Mohsen Yalfani about his life, work, and the recent reading of his play “Diaspora,” directed by Shabnam Tolouei at Stanford University. Ms. Tolouei joined the conversation as well. Discussion is in Persian. Mohsen Yalfani was born in 1943 in Hamadan, Iran. He wrote his first plays in his last year in high school and submitted one to the Center for Dramatic Arts in Tehran and won a prize for it. At the age of 18 he moved to Tehran, and while studying at the Teachers' Training College, another of his plays won the same prize. This play was staged in the major theater in Tehran in 1966. Yalfani wrote several one act plays that were published in literary magazines and produced for Iranian television. In 1970 he wrote “The Teachers” which was staged in Tehran. The play was stopped by the Shah’s SAVAK and Yalfani along with the director, Saeid Soltanpoor, were arrested and spent three months in prison. Henceforth, all of Yalfani’s plays were prohibited from being staged or published. In 1973, while collaborating with the Iran Theatre Association, he was arrested, along with his coworkers and friends, and imprisoned for four years. In prison, he translated and adapted the book Voice and the Actor by Cicely Berry and wrote his one-act play “On the Beach.” When released in 1978, Yalfani collaborated with the Iranian Writers' Association (of which he was elected as a member of the secretariat). After the Islamic Regime’s crackdown on democratic associations, Yalfani left Iran, in disguise, and sought political asylum in France. Shabnam Tolouei is an award-winning actress, playwright, and director. Born in Tehran, she was forced into exile in 2004 and became a naturalized French citizen in 2019. She has studied filmmaking in Tehran, Bagh-Ferdos Film School and Theatre Studies at Université Paris X, Nanterre, France. She has been writing short stories for cultural magazines since 1990, acting and writing plays since 1993, and teaching acting for camera since 2001. She continues her career outside Iran as an actress, filmmaker, and playwright. Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts. | 2/17/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Reza Shah's Exile in Mauritius with Houchang Chehabi | February 8, 2023 Speaker: Houchang Chehabi Dr. Houchang Chehabi discusses his new research work on Reza Shah and his family's exile in Mauritius. In 1941 Reza Shah and most of his family were exiled by the British to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. They remained there for six months. This talk discusses the circumstances of the royal family's long trip from Bandar Abbas via India to Mauritius, their reception by the colonial authorities of the island, and their ambiguous relations with local Mauritian society against the background of the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean during the Second World War. Dr. Houchang Chehabi is a Visiting Professor at UCLA and Emeritus Professor of International Relations and History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. | 2/8/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"How Iranians and Iran Changed the life of an American Woman" by Mona Khademi | February 2, 2023 Speaker: Mona Khademi Mona Khademi will examine the extraordinary life of Laura Barney and her deep and enduring connections with Iranians and Iran, and their impact on her life. Laura Barney learned Persian, traveled to Iran in 1906, visited several cities there, and met many Iranian dignitaries and government officials. She also met Iranian officials and scholars outside of Iran. Laura Barney was born in Ohio in 1879 but lived much of her life in Paris. She was introduced to the Baha’i Faith in 1900 in Paris and accepted its teachings. This sudden and profound change in the life of this young woman would have lasting consequences throughout the rest of her long life. She traveled to Akka, Palestine, the same year and met the son of the founder of the Baha’i faith, Abdu’l-Baha, who was then confined to prison. She compiled a book based on his responses to questions she posed to him titled Some Answered Questions, which was published in 1908 in three languages and became a major Baha’i book. Laura Barney’s humanitarian activities reflected her spiritual beliefs in the equality of men and women, world peace, and the oneness of humankind. She promoted these principles through her selfless work with the League of Nations and the International Council of Women, and later with the United Nations. She used her social privileges and blessings to become a feminist, global thinker, and peace builder. For her services to France, she was named Chevalier and later Officer of the Legion of Honors. Mona Khademi received her BA from Pahlavi University (today’s Shiraz University), Master's Degree in Arts Management from the American University, and has worked towards a PHD degree at Imperial College in London. As an independent researcher, Khademi has presented papers at conferences in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, England, and several cities in the US. Her articles have been published in several journals and magazines, quarterlies, and as chapters of books. Khademi started her research about the life of Laura Clifford Dreyfus-Barney in 2000 and has presented papers and published articles on this subject. Based on this research, she wrote the full biography titled "The Life of Laura Barney" which was published in June 2022. Mona Khademi is the Director of International Arts Management Consulting in Washington, D.C. Through her consulting firm, she promotes global understanding through exchange of arts and cultural programs. Her areas of interest include development and management of international cultural and arts programs. She is a member of the American Alliance of Museums. | 2/2/2023 | Free | View in iTunes |
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A Narrative of Endurance with Homa Sarshar | December 1, 2022 Speaker: Homa Sarshar Homa Sarshar discusses her new book "A Narrative of Endurance." She also touched on the Iranian women’s movement and demonstrations organized by the Iranian diaspora in support of protests in Iran over the past four decades. This talk is in Persian. About the book: “One can find and obtain knowledge, albeit incomplete, of the footprints of nations and people in cemeteries discovered hundreds of years after their presence in the region. Years later, when a curious passer-by reaches the city of angels and visits each of the cemeteries in the city, they will know that at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, immigrants lived in the city, among them numerous artists, intellectuals, academics, geniuses, political activists, and tireless fighters, who had departed their country or had escaped the prison of the Islamic Republic when the candle of the existence of some of them was soon extinguished. The tombstones of their eternal resting place, each in the cemeteries of Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, London, and other cities, narrate a great historical migration, and so great that counting them all is no easy feat. The name of each of these greats, buried in foreign soil, reminds that passer-by of what happened to this immigrant tribe and the narrative of their legacy.” Homa Sarshar is a published author, award-winning journalist, writer, and media personality. She is the author of several books and the editor of eleven other volumes, including five volumes of the Iranian Women's Studies Foundation Journal and four volumes of "The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews." Her book "Sha’ban Jafari" was the number one best seller Persian book in Iran and abroad in the year 2003. From 1964 to 1978, she worked as a correspondent, reporter, and columnist for Zan-e Ruz weekly magazine and Kayhan daily newspaper in Iran. During this period, she also worked as a television producer, director, and talk show host for National Iranian Radio & Television. In 1978, Sarshar moved to Los Angeles where she resumed her career as a freelance journalist, radio and television producer, and on-air host. An established women’s rights activist, she served a five-year term on the board of the Iranian Women Studies Foundation, has worked with Human Rights Watch, her two-volume memoir ("Dar Koocheh Paskoocheh Ha-ye Ghorbat") was the first publication of a Jewish Iranian memoir, one of the first Persian memoirs after the revolution published outside Iran, as well as one of the very few examples of memoir-writing by an Iranian woman at the time of its publication. In 1995, she founded the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History (CIJOH) in Los Angeles, a nonprofit organization that gathered over 1,600 historically significant photographs and documents, and recorded over 120 oral interviews with elders and leaders of the community. In 2006, she founded Honar Foundation to provide social and financial support to all Iranian American artists in need to ensure that these unique talents are served in the best way possible and their lives are improved. Throughout her 50-year career with Iranian and Iranian-American print, radio, and television, Sarshar has done more than 3000 interviews and has produced and anchored as many radio and television programs. She has also written, directed, and produced a collection of twenty video documentaries on exiled Iranian writers, poets, and artists, some of which have been acquired by the Library of Congress for the library’s permanent audiovisual archive. | 12/1/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Shirin Ebadi: Until We Are Free (film screening discussion) | November 30, 2022 Speaker: Shirin Ebadi The Iranian Studies Program screened a new documentary “Shirin Ebadi: Until We Are Free” about the Nobel Peace laureate’s mission to bring justice to the people of Iran. Dr. Ebadi held a post screening discussion live-translated to English and moderated by Dr. Abbas Milani. The event was introduced by Dr. Abbas Milani. Hamid Moghadam welcomed guests and spoke about Shirin Ebadi's life and work. Dean Debra Satz, the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, and Professor of Philosophy, spoke about the universality of human rights and Iranian women's fight for equality and justice. Professor Michael McFaul, the director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute, closed the event. Shirin Ebadi is an author and lawyer, and was the first female judge in Iran. She has lived in exile in London since 2009. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights, especially those of women and children in Iran. Ebadi was a judge in Iran until 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution, when she was no longer allowed to work as a judge. She co-founded the Society for Protecting the Rights of the Child in 1994 and co-founded the Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC) in 2002 with other lawyers to assist those working towards promoting democracy. After her Nobel Prize in 2003, she co-founded the Nobel Women's Initiative in 2006, and used some of her prize money to support DHRC. In 2008, the Iranian government closed down DHRC by raiding her office, which by then had 30 lawyers working on cases. While she was traveling abroad, her professional archives and personal belongings were confiscated, and her husband and her sister arrested and imprisoned on spurious charges. She published her memoir, "Until We Are Free," in 2016 detailing her fight for human rights in Iran. The film “Shirin Ebadi: Until We Are Free,” written and directed by the award-winning filmmaker Dawn Gifford Engle, tells Ebadi’s story of courage and defiance in the face of a government out to destroy her, her family, and her mission: to bring justice to the people and the country she loves. The Iranian government would end up taking everything from Shirin Ebadi–her marriage, her home, even her Nobel Prize medallion–but the one thing it could never steal was her spirit to fight for justice and a better future for the women of Iran. Read more about the film: https://www.peacejam.org/film/shirin-ebadi-until-we-are-free The event was co-sponsored by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. | 11/30/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Film screening: There Is No Evil | October 29, 2021 Speaker: Mohammad Rasoulof The film screening of There Is No Evil was followed by a discussion with the film's director, Mohammad Rasoulof. The talk is in Persian with live English translation. About the film: Filmed in secret and banned in its home country, Mohammad Rasoulof’s Golden Bear-winning film is an anthology of four short stories, each focused on a person affected by the capital punishment system in a country that commits more executions per capita than anywhere else on Earth. About the director: Mohammad Rasoulof was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1972. He is an independent director, writer, and producer. He studied sociology. Rasoulof started his filmmaking with documentaries and short films. For his first film Gagooman (The Twilight, 2002) Rasoulof won the prize for the best film at the Fajr Film Festival in Iran. After his second film Jazireh Ahani (Iron Island, 2005) he began to have problems with the censorship system in Iran and his possibilities for the further production and screening of films were strongly limited or prohibited. To this date Mohammad Rasoulof has produced five feature films which none of have been shown in Iran due to the censorship, while his films are enjoyed by a broad audience in cinemas and festivals outside of Iran. Until 2010 Rasoulof mostly used metaphoric forms of storytelling as his means of expression in his films. Since then, he has shifted to using more direct forms of expression. In March 2010 Rasoulof was arrested on set at a filming location together with Jafar Panahi while they were directing a film together. In the following trial, he was sentenced to six years in jail. This sentence was later reduced to one year. He was then released on bail and is still waiting for the sentence to be executed. Mohammad Rasoulof has won many prizes for his films. In 2011, he won the prize for best director in Un Certain Regard for his film Bé Omid é Didar (Goodbye, 2011) at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2013 he won the FIPRESCI Prize in Cannes for the film Dast-Neveshteha-Nemisoozand (Manuscripts Don't Burn, 2013) from the International Federation of Film Critics in Un Certain Regard. In 2017 he won the best film Prize in Cannes for the film Lerd (A Man of Integrity, 2017) in Un Certain Regard. He won the prize Golden Bear for the film Sheytan Vojood Nadarad (There Is No Evil, 2020) at the Berlin Film Festival 2020. | 10/29/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion: It Snows In This House (Book Talk) | October 28, 2022 Speaker: Hamed Esmaeilion Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion discusses his award-winning novels written in Persian, as well as his moving memoir about the loss of his wife and daughter in the downing of flight PS752 by the Islamic Republic of Iran on January 8, 2020. Introduction by Dr. Abbas Milani. Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion was born in Kermanshah, Iran and grew up during the Iran-Iraq war that ravaged the western part of Iran, including his hometown. Hamed earned his doctorate in dentistry in 2001. He married Parissa, a university classmate, and they opened a small dental practice in Tehran. In 2010, they moved to Canada when their daughter Reera was six months old and opened an independent practice just north of Toronto. While in Iran, Hamed published four novels that earned him several awards from the top Iranian literary circles. His first novel, Thyme is Not Pretty was published in 2009 and won the Hooshang Golshiri award for best short story collection. His third book titled Dr. Datis was published in 2012 and was awarded the Hooshang Golshiri award for best novel. Gamasyab Has No Fish was published in 2014 and was critically acclaimed and subsequently banned by the Islamic Republic authorities. The novel was later translated and published in Spanish by a Mexican publisher. After being black-listed by the Islamic Culture and Guidance Ministry, Hamed published his next novel The Blue Toukan in the United Kingdom. On January 8, 2020, Hamed lost his wife and nine-year old daughter who were aboard the Ukrainian flight PS752 that was shot down by IRGC missiles over the skies of Tehran. In the aftermath of the tragedy, he published his memoir It Snows in This House. Before the downing of flight PS752, Hamed was working on two novels, The Fractured Diaries of the Chancellor and The Summer with Five Bullets. He completed and published the last three books under the label Pareera Publishing that he founded in honor of his wife and daughter. Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts. | 10/28/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion and Babak Payami: An Open Wound in the Sky | October 13, 2022 Speakers: Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion and Babak Payami The Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies held a special screening of award-winning director Babak Payami’s new documentary "752 Is Not a Number" about the unprecedented downing of a passenger flight leaving Tehran airport by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The film follows Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion’s struggles with grief and his fight for justice after losing his wife and daughter on flight PS752. Dr. Esmaeilion read excerpts from his memoir about the tragedy, "It Snows In This House." Mr. Payami and Dr. Esmaeilion discussed the film and answered questions after the screening. Introduction by Dr. Abbas Milani. Babak Payami was born in Tehran in 1966 and grew up in Iran and Afghanistan before leaving for Europe and subsequently Canada. He enrolled in the Cinema Studies program at the University of Toronto and eventually returned to Iran in 1998 where he wrote, produced, and directed his debut feature film "One More Day." He later wrote, directed, and co-produced with Marco Mueller, his second feature film "Secret Ballot," which went on to compete in the official program of the Venice International Film Festival in 2001 and earned him several accolades in Venice, including the Best Director award. In 2002 he began production on "Silence Between Two Thoughts" which he wrote, directed, and produced in remote areas of eastern Iran close to the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of the original material for the film was confiscated by the Iranian government and Babak was forced into exile in 2003. Babak has produced and directed numerous projects and has taught at the Ludwigsburg Film Academy in Germany and conducted workshops in Italy and North America. He was the creative director of the Media Studio at Fabrica. The Imagisti Creative Studio is the convergence of Payami’s work as an independent artist. Based in Toronto, Imagisti is a hub for young creative talent offering a unique array of acting and directing training classes, film and music production workshops, and artist coaching and branding programs. Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion was born in Kermanshah, Iran and grew up during the Iran-Iraq war that ravaged the western part of Iran, including his hometown. Hamed earned his doctorate in dentistry in 2001. He married Parissa, a university classmate, and they opened a small dental practice in Tehran. In 2010, they moved to Canada when their daughter Reera was six months old and opened an independent practice just north of Toronto. While in Iran, Hamed published four novels that earned him several awards from the top Iranian literary circles. His first novel, "Thyme is Not Pretty" was published in 2009 and won the Hooshang Golshiri award for best short story collection. His third book titled "Dr. Datis" was published in 2012 and was awarded the Hooshang Golshiri award for best novel. "Gamasyab Has No Fish" was published in 2014 and was critically acclaimed and subsequently banned by the Islamic Republic authorities. The novel was later translated and published in Spanish by a Mexican publisher. After being black-listed by the Islamic Culture and Guidance Ministry, Hamed published his next novel "The Blue Toukan" in the United Kingdom. On January 8, 2020, Hamed lost his wife and nine-year old daughter who were aboard the Ukrainian flight PS752 that was shot down by IRGC missiles over the skies of Tehran. In the aftermath of the tragedy, he published his memoir "It Snows in This House." Before the downing of flight PS752, Hamed was working on two novels, "The Fractured Diaries of the Chancellor" and "The Summer with Five Bullets." He completed and published the last three books under the label Pareera Publishing that he founded in honor of his wife and daughter. | 10/13/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Book Talk: The Battles of a Judge with Dr. Hamid Najafi | September 29, 2022 Speaker: Dr. Hamid Najafi Dr. Hamid Najafi discusses his new book "The Battles of a Judge." The book was written by Dr. Najafi and his late father, Dr. Hossein Najafi. From 1946 to 1979, Hossein Najafi served at the Justice Ministry of Iran. He started in an entry level judicial position after law school and rose to lead the Justice Department as a minister during the most tumultuous months of the Iranian Revolution. The book is his firsthand recollection of the legal cases and judgments he worked on during 33 years of service to his country. The book includes some of the most critical cases brought to the Justice Department during the Shah’s time and culminated in Dr. Najafi’s imprisonment by the Islamic revolutionaries and his eventual release under unprecedented circumstances. The writings depict a real, unbiased portrayal of the Justice Department, those in positions of power who tried to sway his judgements to their benefit, and illustrate how he never flinched in the pursuit of what he believed to be the uncompromised delivery of justice. Dr. Najafi’s never-before-told description of the events include numerous meetings with the Shah–many of which were private–during the most fateful and consequential months of Iran’s contemporary history. This book is essential reading for those interested in the recent history of Iran and, most importantly, to those working today, or planning to work in the future, in justice departments in Iran or elsewhere. Dr. Hamid Najafi, received his doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1983 and has worked as a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for 40 years, primarily in wireless communications. He currently runs two startups while pursuing his beloved hobby of singing. He collected the writings of his late father, Dr. Hossein Najafi, and co-wrote portions of this book. | 9/29/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Nobody's Periphery: Pahlavi Iran and the Arab-Israeli Conflict | May 31, 2022 Speaker: Arash Azizi "Pahlavi Iran, alongside Turkey, was a rare case of a Muslim-majority state to have consistent relations with Israel. Much of existing literature often discusses this as an aspect of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s Policy of Periphery. But the Shah’s relations with Israel were in line with his foreign policy conception of “National Independent Policy” and part of a careful balancing act that aimed to stake out a unique place for Iran in the global Cold War. Following the 1967 war, the Shah publicly criticized Israel and demanded its withdrawal from the occupied territories while Iran also maintained clandestine ties to the PLO and restored its ties to the leading Arab nation of Egypt. The Shah’s vision of Iran as a Muslim country and his opposition to remnants of European colonialism also motivated Iran’s policy in this era. Basing itself on a study of the Ardeshir Zahedi papers at the Hoover Library & Archives—which include accounts of Iran’s diplomatic meetings with countries such as Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Soviet Union and Yugoslavia—this study attempts to flesh out the formation and execution of Iranian policy on the Arab- and Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the 1967-79 period." Arash Azizi, a PhD candidate in History and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University (NYU), will be the first Zahedi Family Fellow at Stanford University, joining in spring 2022. His dissertation charts the history of Communist internationalism in the Middle East as part of the Global Cold War. Focusing on the ties between the Communist parties of Iran and Iraq, the dissertation looks at their transnational collaboration, their unique stance on Israel/Palestine and their rivalry with the New Left and Islamists. It looks to show how the Cold War was waged in the Middle East, not only by distant superpowers but by local actors such as the communists and their opponents such as the Shah of Iran. | 5/31/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Reconfiguration of Iran's Political Elite: Rising Indoctrinated Technocrats with Saeid Golkar | May 19, 2022 Speaker: Saeid Golkar Ayatollah Khamenei is replacing the Islamic Republic's old cohort of specialists with newly indoctrinated technocrats, preparing the regime for a swift succession. In addition, reconfiguration of political elites is shifting the power equilibrium in the Islamic Republic, facilitating greater coordination between deep and visible states. Saeid Golkar is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Concurrently, he is a non-resident Senior Fellow on Middle East Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) and The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in the UK. | 5/19/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Ehsan Yarshater's Yaddashtha: Reflections on Iranian History, Literature, Culture, and the Arts | April 8, 2022 Speakers: Mahnaz Afkhami, Ali Banuazizi, Mandana Zandian Scholars reflect on Ehsan Yarshater's remarkable contributions and lasting impact on the study of Iranian history, literature, culture, and the arts. Dr. Yarshater (1920-2018) was Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University, the founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Iranian Studies, and the founding editor of the Encyclopædia Iranica. In 2016, he was awarded the Bita Prize in Persian Arts from the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University. Mahnaz Afkhami – Yarshater's Impact on The Foundation for Iranian Studies The pioneering work of the Foundation for Iranian Studies (FIS) began in 1981. It was a time of loss and confusion—a characteristic of revolution and exile—but even more challenging, a time of division, anger, and animosity among the diaspora. Ehasan Yarshater provided pivotal support in a variety of areas of the Foundation's work, especially by sharing and supporting the idea that the prevailing battle against all that was Persian in Iran's history, literature, and the arts was an existential threat to the self-definition of Iranians. He assembled a substantial research library without which the FIS journal, Iran Nameh (ed. Jalal Matini), could not fulfill its purpose. Ms. Afkhami will provide a brief summary of the interaction and collaboration between the team at FIS and Dr. Yarshater's expanse of interests and initiatives.Mahnaz Afkhami Ali Banuazizi – Yarshater's Formative and Lasting Contributions to Iranian Studies A brief overview of Professor Ehsan Yarshater’s lifetime contributions to the study of Iranian history and culture. He was not only the leading scholar of his generation in several areas of Iranian studies, but one who devoted his entire professional life to building institutions and initiating projects with lasting impact. With examples drawn from the recently published collection of Yarshater’s notes and reflections, the talk will also illustrate how widely he cast his eyes—beyond his own intellectual pursuits—on various aspects of Iran’s history, popular culture, and politics, offering constructive criticisms to advance the work of others.Ali Banuazizi Mandana Zandian – Understanding Yarshater Through His "Diaries" Diaries contains a series of notes written by Dr. Ehsan Yarshater—the most prominent Iranian studies scholar of our time— over a period of 26 years (1986-2012) for the journals Irannameh and Iranshenasi (ed. Jalal Matini). Yarshater's notes narrate his observations and evaluations in many thematic areas related to the study of Iran including various historical and political perspectives, as well as his comprehensive knowledge of Persian language, literature, and culture in different historical periods. Dr. Zandian discusses Diaries and Professor Yarshater's contribution to Persian literature, culture, and art. | 4/22/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Clash of Values: Islamic Fundamentalism Versus Liberal Nationalism with Mansoor Moaddel | April 14, 2022 The Clash of Values provides groundbreaking empirical data to demonstrate how the collision between Islamic fundamentalism and liberal nationalism explains the region’s present and will determine its future. Analyzing data from over 60,000 face-to-face interviews of nationally representative samples of people in seven countries—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey—Moaddel reveals the depth and breadth of the conflict of values. Dr. Mansoor Moaddel studies religion, ideology, political conflict, revolution and social change. His work currently addresses the causes and consequences of human values. He has carried out values surveys in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey. His latest survey project focused on a cross-national comparative analysis of religious fundamentalism in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey. He is currently engaged in a comparative cross-national panel survey in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey in order to understand the dynamics of change in values and political engagements. His previous empirical research project was a comparative historical analysis of ideological production in the Islamic world in which he studied Islamic modernism in Egypt, India, and Iran between the late nineteenth century and early twentieth; liberal nationalism in Egypt, anti-clerical secularism in Iran, liberal Arabism and pan-Arab nationalism in Syria and Iraq in the first half of the twentieth century; and Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria in the second half. Moaddel’s teaching interests are in the areas of values survey, sociology of ideology, sociology of religion, political conflict and revolution, terrorism and political violence, religion and politics in the Middle East and North Africa, and statistics. | 4/14/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Legacy of Mohammad Mosaddegh with Nicolas Gorjestani | March 3, 2022 Speaker: Nicolas Gorjestani Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran's prime minister in the early 1950s, was one of the most consequential national leaders of the twentieth century. Based on his recent book, Nicolas Gorjestani will examine Mosaddegh's life story, resistance strategy, governance, reform record, and overthrow. Mosaddegh locked horns with Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower in 1951-1953 over the nationalization of Iran's oil industry. In the event, Mosaddegh was overthrown in the first post-WWII regime change organized and supported by the British MI6 and the American CIA. The book combines insightful memoir, strategic analysis, economic assessment, and historical review based on primary sources in Iran, the UK, the US and the World Bank. Nicolas Gorjestani is a former senior official of the World Bank with economic development experience spanning more than four decades in countries undergoing transformational change. Born in Iran of Georgian heritage, Nicolas lives in Washington, DC. | 3/3/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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One Hundred Years of Extraterritoriality and Capitulations in Iran: 1828-1928 | February 25, 2022 In the age of imperialism Iran was one of only a handful of non-Western states that maintained their sovereignty. However, as in other places such as the Ottoman Empire, China, and Siam, this sovereignty was punctured by unequal treaties that granted certain Western powers extraterritorial rights. These rights were justified by the absence of a rational legal system that would safeguard the rights of foreigners. To regain full sovereignty, therefore, Iranians had to give themselves a modern legal system. This talk traces the development of Iran's punctured sovereignty and efforts to restore sovereignty through legal reform from the Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828 to the abolition of the capitulations in 1928. Dr. Houchang Chehabi is a Professor of International Relations and History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, and an honorary professor in the School of History of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. His most recent book is Onomastic Reform: Family Names and State Building in Iran (Boston: Ilex Foundation, 2020). | 2/22/2022 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Film screening: "Immigrant Stories: Iranian-Americans of Silicon Valley" | November 12, 2021 The film screening of Immigrant Stories: Iranian-Americans of Silicon Valley was followed by a conversation with the film's co-directors, Nima Naimi, Alireza Sanayei, and Julian Gigola. About the documentary: Iranian Americans have achieved remarkable success across all professional fields, with many recognized internationally for their outstanding contributions. This film tells the first-hand immigration stories of several Iranian-Americans, covering 3 generations and over a dozen personal stories, and how Iranian-Americans have become one of the most successful diasporas in the U.S. About the co-directors: Nima Naimi is a first generation Iranian-American film director born and raised in the San Francisco, Bay Area. He has studied film in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, receiving his BFA degree in Motion Picture Directing at Columbia College Hollywood. While in college he directed a music video for European pop-star Benny Cristovao, which was nominated for an MTV European Music Award in 2012. Nima moved back to San Francisco after college and began his own production company, Spirit Film Productions Inc., where he’s been creating video content and marketing ads for Silicon Valley startups for the past 9 years. Alireza Sanayei, Co-Founder and director of Spirit Film Productions, studied animation in Iran. He started his career at the age 15 designing characters for IRIB2. He moved to San Francisco in 2013, and changed his major to film production. Alireza joined Nima and Julian to form Spirit Film Productions Inc. in 2017, where they began directing and producing “Immigrant Stories: Iranian-Americans of Silicon Valley,” a feature documentary about the life stories of 3 generations of Iranian-Americans. Under Spirit Film Productions, Ali has also made videos with several tech companies such as Pear VC, Google & Aurora Solar. Julian Gigola started his videography career after immigrating to the United States at the age of 17. He pursued his passion for photography by making several music videos, advertisements and creating websites. Soon after he joined Nima and Ali to co-direct the feature documentary, “Immigrant Stories: Iranian-Americans of Silicon Valley.” | 11/12/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Global 1968, the Death of Takhti, and the Birth of the Iranian Revolution | October 15, 2021 Naghmeh Sohrabi and Arash Davari This talk reconstructs rumors and demonstrations in 1968 around the death of Gholamreza Takhti, Iran's beloved gold-winning wrestling champion, recentering them in the history of the 1979 revolution and the global 1960s. The account of the demonstrations provided here explains a mobilization tactic used to great effect in the lead up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution: the staging of protests on the fortieth day of mourning. Locating this tactic in 1968, at a moment of global protest, and before ideological disputes between leftists and Islamists congealed in Iran, casts a spotlight on the indeterminate quality of the revolution as a lived event. The authors argue that discussions of “global 1968,” and approaches to global history more broadly construed, must account both for the local specificity and the global echoes signaled by events like the Takhti demonstrations. Naghmeh Sohrabi is the Charles (Corky) Goodman professor of Middle East History and the Director for Research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. She is working on her second book about the revolutionary generation in Iran tentatively titled The Intimate Lives of a Revolution: Iran 1979. Her research on the revolution has received fellowships and grants from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Academy in Berlin. She is currently the president of the Association for Iranian Studies. Arash Davari is assistant professor of Politics at Whitman College. His research and teaching interests include modern, postcolonial, and contemporary political theory; history and theory; aesthetics and politics; and state formation and social change in the Middle East, with a focus on modern Iran. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently completing a book manuscript about the 1979 revolution in Iran that situates those events in the context of global transformations in the 1970s and political theory. | 11/5/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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On Ebrahim Golestan: An Inquiry into "Tide and Mist" | November 5, 2021 Speaker: Sahand Abidi Sahand Abidi is an essayist and critic. He studied drama at the fine arts faculty of Tehran University. He worked as a playwright, dramaturge, assistant director and actor in theatre, and taught courses on the history of theater. He has worked in different capacities on numerous films, documentaries and plays. Many of his essays on aspects of modern Iranian theatre, cinema, and literature (on Beyzaie, Chubak, Golestan, Kimiai, Nalbandian, etc.) have been published in various journals and books. He was a panelist in Stanford’s conference celebrating the life and work of Bahram Beyzaie. This talk is in Persian. | 11/5/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Image and Words in the Films and Stories of Ebrahim Golestan | October 22, 2021 Speaker: Ameneh Yousefi Ameneh Yousefi was born in Hamedan city in Iran. She received her Doctoral in Persian Literature from the University of Karaj. She has done several auditorial, visual and animated projects as an author for Local National Broadcasting. She currently teaches Persian Literature in Ganjname University in Hamedan City and is researching the representation of intellectual figures in ten contemporary Persian novels. Her talk covers the inter-textual relations between words and images in Ebrahim Golestan’s films and fiction. This talk is in Persian. | 10/22/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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White Torture: The Infamy of Solitary Confinement in Iran with Narges Mohammadi | September 29, 2021 Narges Mohammadi in conversation with Darius Rejali and Abbas Milani. Narges Mohammadi is Deputy Director of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC). She was elected as President of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Peace in Iran, a broad coalition against war and for the promotion of human rights. She has campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty in Iran and was awarded the Per Anger Prize by the Swedish government for her human rights work in 2011. In a two volume study, called White Torture, she underscores how solitary confinement is indeed an insidious form of torture. She has interviewed many of Iran’s dissidents who have been subjected to solitary confinement. Based on these conversations, she has also produced a documentary. Darius Rejali, professor of political science at Reed College, is an internationally recognized expert on government torture and interrogation. Iranian-born, Rejali has spent his career reflecting on violence, specifically, on the causes, consequences, and meaning of modern torture in our world. His award-winning work spans concerns in political science, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, and critical social theory. He is the author of "Torture and Democracy" (2007), "Torture and Modernity: Self, Society, and State in Modern Iran" (1994), and many related articles. He consults as an expert for international scholarly projects on torture prevention, serves as an adviser to nongovernmental organizations that work on torture-related issues, and has submitted expert testimony for Guantanamo (Al Ginco v. Obama) and Abu Ghraib related cases (Al Shimari v. CACI International). He has been interviewed widely, from Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! to David Frost on Al Jazeera, from the BBC to the Washington Post. Abbas Milani is the Director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a research fellow at The Hoover Institution. He taught at Tehran University, Faculty of Law and Political Science until 1986. He has written and translated many books and articles. Most recently, he edited and wrote the introduction for "A Window into Modern Iran: The Ardeshir Zahedi Papers at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives," and "Saadi and Humanism" with Maryam Mirzadeh. | 10/21/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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SGS Summer Film Festival: Cafe Transit | August 11, 2021 Speaker: Fereshteh Sadreorafaei Fereshteh Sadreorafaei was born in Tehran, Iran in 1962. From a young age, she attended the Children and Adolescents' Intellectual Development Center. There, she studied theater and puppetry and staged several puppet shows. From 1974-1976, she was a student at Pars National Ballet under the supervision of Abdullah Nazemi. Due to the Iranian Revolution and closure of universities, she was unable to acquire a university education. During which time she got married and started a family. She worked as a puppet actress in a children’s TV series, using what she learned from the Intellectual Development Center. Her first professional theater performance was in 1983, followed by her debut in cinema in 1985. She went on to narrate and puppeteer in 17 series and films, directed four TV series for children and teenagers, acted in 20 films, and acted in one unreleased TV series. She has collaborated with directors such as Jafar Panahi, Kambozia Partovi, Reza Mirkarimi, Abdolreza Kahani, Mohammad Rasoulov, Maziar Miri, Narges Abyar, Massoud Bakhshi and, in her latest film Ghahraman, Asghar Farhadi. She has been nominated for and received numerous awards, including several for Café Transit. About the film: Written and directed by Kambuzia Partovi (2005). Synopsis: In a village near Iran's border with Turkey, Reyhan (Fereshteh Sadreorafaei), a young woman with two children, faces a difficult choice when her husband dies. Instead of marrying her brother-in-law (Parviz Parastoei), as required by traditional law, she chooses to support her family by reopening her late husband's restaurant. Part of Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts. | 8/11/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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President Carter's Handling of the Iranian Revolution and Hostage Crisis: Discussion with Kai Bird | July 18, 2021 Kai Bird discusses President Jimmy Carter's interaction with Iran as a part of his new book, "The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter" (Crown, 2021). More about the book: "Four decades after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed, many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping-stone to greater achievements. But in retrospect the Carter political odyssey is a rich and human story, marked by both formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity. In this deeply researched, brilliantly written account, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Kai Bird expertly unfolds the Carter saga as a tragic tipping point in American history." Kai Bird is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian who has published biographies of John J. McCloy, McGeorge Bundy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Ames—and now "The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter." He has also authored a memoir about his childhood in the Middle East. He is the Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. | 7/20/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Nonviolent Revolution of Iranian Women Writers: A Conversation with Farzaneh Milani | June 24, 2021 Professor Farzaneh Milani discusses Iranian women writers and the Iranian women’s movement with Professor Abbas Milani. The conversation is a part of the on-going series on the Iranian women’s movement. Farzaneh Milani is Raymond J. Nelson Professor of Iranian and Gender Studies and Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia. She is the former Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures and past Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and holds a joint appointment in both departments. Milani has published books and articles in Persian and English. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Ms. Magazine, Reader's Digest International, and USA Today, among others. She has presented more than 270 lectures nationally and internationally. Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts. | 6/29/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Losing Our Minds, Coming to Our Senses: Sensory readings of Persian literature (A Hafezian Banquet) | May 27, 2021 Literary research premised on sensory studies challenges above all the monopolization of modern Persian literary criticism by socio-political discourses, which generally rely on content-based approaches constructing "committed readings" of literary production. "Committed readings" circumscribe the significance of the literary by allowing the text to only be a site of resistance and calls to action, thus foreclosing opportunities for alternative readings. Sensory studies challenge the limits of such approaches, and this confrontation takes place in the fields of aesthetics-stylistics and literary readings. Mehdi Khorrami, Emeritus Professor, New York University, is the author of "Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction: Who Writes Iran" (2014), and "Modern Reflections of Classical Traditions in Persian Fiction" (2003), and a number of essays and book chapters on the rhetorical and aesthetic dynamics of Persian modernist writing and contemporary Persian prison literature. He has also co-edited and co-translated a number of books, including: "Fayz Muhammad Katib Hazrah’s Afghan Genealogy and Memoir of the Revolution" (2019), "Moments of Silence: Authenticity in the Cultural Expressions of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980–1988" (2016), "Vol. 4 of The History of Afghanistan: Fayz Muhammad Kātib’s Sirāj al-tawārıkh" (2016), "A Persian Mosaic: Essays: Essays on Persian Language, Literature and Film in Honor of M. R. Ghanoonparvar" (2015), "Vol. 3 of The History of Afghanistan: Fayz Muhammad Kātib’s Sirāj al-tawārıkh" (2013), "Sohrab’s Wars: Counter-Discourses of Contemporary Persian Fiction: A Collection of Short Stories and a Film Script" (2008), "Critical Encounters: Essays on Persian Literature and Culture in Honor of Peter J. Chelkowski" (2007), "Another Sea, Another Shore: Persian Stories of Migration" (2004), "A Feast in the Mirror: Stories by Contemporary Iranian Women" (2000), "A Feast in the Mirror: Stories by Contemporary Iranian Women" (in Persian, 2002), "A World Between: Poems and Short Stories by Iranian-Americans" (1999). Prof. Khorrami’s lecture was originally accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation and the video is forthcoming. The images used are accessible at the following links: "Allegory of Sight and Smell" (1618) by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Hendrick van Balen the Elder, and Gerard Seghers, courtesy Museo del Prado, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Brueghel_(I),_Hendrick_van_Balen_(I)_and_Gerard_Seghers_-_Allegory_of_Sight_and_Smell.jpg "The Senses of Hearing, Touch and Taste" (1618) by Jan Brueghel the Elder, courtesy Museo del Prado, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:File-Bruegel_d._Ä.,_Jan_-The_Senses_of_Hearing,_Touch_and_Taste_-_1618.jpg | 6/4/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Economic Cost of the Islamic Revolution and War for Iran with Mohammad Reza Farzanegan | May 20, 2021 This study estimates the joint effect of a new political regime and war against Iraq, on Iran’s per capita Gross Domestic Product (‘GDP,’ constant 2010 US$) for the period 1978–1988, during the revolution/war. Professor Mohammad Reza Farzanegan uses a synthetic control approach, whereby a synthetic Iran is constructed as a weighted average of other Middle East and North Africa (‘MENA’)/Organization of the Petroleum Exporting (‘OPEC’) countries to match the average level of some key per capita GDP correlates over the period 1970–1977 as well as the evolution of the actual Iranian per capita GDP during that period. He finds a sizable negative effect of the joint treatment. The average Iranian lost an accumulated sum of approximately US $34,660 during 1978–1988 (i.e. the average annual real per capita income loss of US $3,150). This loss equals 40% of the real income per capita, which an Iranian could earn in the absence of revolution and war. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan is a Professor in Economics of the Middle East (since 2012) at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) & School of Business and Economics of Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany. He is the coordinating professor for the international master study program of Economics of the Middle East in Marburg. He is an ERF Research Fellow, and CESifo Research Network Fellow. His main areas of research are political economy, development economics, energy economics, and empirical institutional economics. His research has been published in edited volumes and international journals. He gained his PhD in Economics from the Technische Universität Dresden with the research grant of DAAD (2006-2009). He received the Georg Forster Research Fellowship for postdoctoral researchers from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for his project at ZEW Mannheim & TU Dresden (2010-2012). He obtained his MSc degree in Energy Economics & Marketing from University of Tehran (2000-2003) and his BA in Theoretical Economics from Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran (1995-1999). | 6/4/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Iranian Women's Movement: A Conversation with Kian Katouzian | May 6, 2021 Kian Katouzian discusses her life as a working woman in Iran, participating in the opposition against the Shah and then against Khomeini before leaving Iran for a life of exile in France. She discusses the feelings of loneliness and disorientation while living in exile. She earned a master’s degree in education in Iran in the 1960s, was a professor of history and geography for more than twenty years, and was head of a high school. She was the editor-in-chief of "Jonbeche," a newspaper opposed to the Shah’s regime. | 6/4/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Translating Ulysses into Persian: A Century of Censorship with Akram Pedramnia | April 22, 2021 Translating a work that employs inventive literary techniques is an already arduous task, however, negotiating with a system of imposed censorship makes the process of translating and publishing increasingly more intricate. In this talk, Akram Pedramnia explores the challenges of translating modernist works, like "Lolita," "Tender is the Night," as well as "Ulysses," under a system of imposed censorship and discusses the methods she employs to evade it. Akram Pedramnia is an Iranian-Canadian author and translator. She has published three novels in Persian. Among others, she has translated F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "Tender is the Night" (2009), Vladimir Nabokov’s "Lolita" (2013), and James Joyce’s "Ulysses" (2019). She is a recipient of the Friends of the 2019 Zurich James Joyce Foundation Scholarship and the 2020 Joyce Translation Scholarship and Looren Residency. Her translation of "Ulysses" received a Literature Ireland Translation Grant. She has been a guest speaker in the English Literature Department of New York University during the academic years of 2019 and 2020 and a lecturer at University College Dublin in 2018. She is an active member of the International James Joyce Foundation. Event is in Persian/Farsi. Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts. | 5/3/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Iran's Experiment with Parliamentary Government with Mangol Bayat | For the past several decades, scholars have studied and written about the Iranian constitutional revolution with the 1979 Islamic Revolution as a subtext, obscuring the secularist trend that characterized its very nature. Constitutionalist leaders represented a diverse composite of beliefs, yet they all shared a similar vision of a new Iran, one that included far-reaching modernizing reforms and concepts rooted in the European Enlightenment. The second national assembly (majles), during its brief two-year term, aspired to legislate these reforms in one of the most important experiments in parliamentary governance. In her recent book Iran’s Experiment with Parliamentary Government: The Second Majles 1909-1911 (Syracuse University Press, 2020), Mangol Bayat provides a much-needed detailed analysis of this historic episode, examining the national and international actors, and the political climate that engendered one crisis after another, ultimately leading to its fateful end. Bayat highlights the radical transformation of old institutions and the innovation of new ones, and most importantly, shows how this term provided a reasonably successful model of parliament imposing its will on the executive power that was primarily composed of old-guard, elite leaders. At the same time, Bayat challenges the traditional perception among scholars that reform attempts failed due to sectarian politics and ideological differences. She also describes in detail the role of the European nineteenth-early twentieth century Great Game in Asia, and more specifically the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention dividing Iran into two spheres of influence, in causing the abrupt closing of the second majles that temporarily halted the reform project. Mangol Bayat has taught Middle Eastern history at several universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Iowa, Harvard University, and Shiraz University (formerly Pahlavi University). She is the author of Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran and Iran's First Revolution: Shi'ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1909. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Britain and the Abdication of Reza Shah with Shaul Bakhash | When Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran in August 1941 during the Second World War, in violation of Iran’s policy of neutrality, their principal purpose was to use Iran as a bridge to supply a Russia hard-pressed by Hitler’s army with vital military and other supplies. Believing Reza Shah would not cooperate with the Allies to the degree they required, Britain and Russia engineered the shah’s abdication, and the British took him into exile, first to the island of Mauritius, then to Johannesburg where he passed the last two years of his life. This lecture will describe the evolution of the decision to force Reza Shah to surrender his throne and the shah’s final, troubled journey through Iran and into exile. Shaul Bakhash is the Clarence Robinson Professor of History Emeritus at George Mason University and a specialist in the history of modern Iran. He is the author of Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (Basic Books, 1986), Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy and Reform under the Qajars, 1858-1896 (Ithaca, 1978), and most recently The Fall of Reza Shah: The Abdication, Exile and Death of Modern Iran's Founder (I.B. Tauris, 2021). His many articles on Iranian and Middle East history have appeared in numerous books and journals. He has also written for the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Middle East Journal, Democracy and other publications. His Op-ed essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers. Previous to his academic career, he worked for many years as a journalist in Iran as a reporter, commentator, and editor for Kayhan newspapers and reported from Iran for the Economist, the (London) Times, and the Financial Times. He was educated at Harvard and Oxford Universities and has been awarded fellowships by the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, The Guggenheim Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Exposing Economic Corruption in Iran: A Journalist's Odyssey into Exile with Mohammad Mosaed | Mohammad Mosaed is an Iranian investigative journalist who wrote and reported on economic corruption in Iran. He was arrested in November 2019, banned from working, and sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in prison. He escaped the country while appealing the final verdict and is currently in Turkey. Mohammad received the 2018 Best Economic Reporter Award, the 2020 CPJ Press Freedom Award, and the 2020 Deutsche Welle Award for Freedom of Expression for his reporting work. He was recently named one of the top ten most pressing cases of press freedom abuses around the world, as identified by the One Free Press Coalition from The Washington Post. Mr. Mosaed will discuss his work as a journalist and his findings on economic corruption in Iran. Conversation will be in Persian/Farsi. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Song Sparrow: Film Screening & Discussion with Farzaneh Omidvarnia | Farzaneh Omidvarnia’s 2019 short film “Song Sparrow” (11 minutes) follows a group of refugees trying to reach a safe country in search of a better life. Based on real events in Austria in 2015 and Ireland in 2019, the film creatively uses dolls and no dialogue to tell the story of refugees who pay a smuggler to transport them in a refrigerated truck—the freezing temperatures turning their hopes for a better future into a fierce struggle for survival. The film asks viewers to reflect on whether "It is better to go or to stay?" Or perhaps more accurately, "Is it worse to stay than to go?" "Is a large swath of humanity entrapped by events befallen their lands many centuries before they were born?" Farzaneh Omidvarnia was born in Iran and graduated from the University of Tehran, Faculty of Fine Arts. She received a PhD in design in 2015 from the Technical University of Denmark. Following her graduation, she began to focus on the creation of fabric sculptures and writing short stories. Her artwork soon appeared in several art exhibitions in Europe and Iran, and she published her first collection of short stories in 2016. In 2017, she directed and produced her first animated film “To Be” (6 minutes, drama). The movie was recognized internationally and won prizes in various festivals. Her second film “Song Sparrow” is qualified for an Oscar in 2021. She is currently based in Copenhagen, Denmark. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Beholding Beauty: Sa'di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry | Professor Domenico Ingenito discusses his new book Beholding Beauty: Sa'di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry (Brill, December 2020). The book explores the relationship between sexuality, politics, and spirituality in the lyrics of Sa'di Shirazi (d. 1282 CE), one of the most revered masters of classical Persian literature. Relying on a variety of sources, including unstudied manuscripts, Professor Ingenito presents the so-called "inimitable smoothness" of Sa'di's lyric style as a serene yet multifaceted window into the uncanny beauty of the world, the human body, and the realm of the unseen. "Beholding Beauty constitutes the first attempt to study Sa'di's lyric meditations on beauty in the context of the major artistic, scientific and intellectual trends of his time. By charting unexplored connections between Islamic philosophy and mysticism, obscene verses and courtly ideals of love, Professor Ingenito approaches Sa'di's literary genius from the perspective of sacred homoeroticism and the psychology of performative lyricism in their historical context." Domenico Ingenito is Director of the Program on Central Asia and Assistant Professor of Persian literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests center on medieval Persian poetry, visual culture of Iran and Central Asia, gender and translations studies, and geocriticism. His most recent articles are: "Hafez's 'Shirāzi Turk': A Geopoetical Approach;" and "'A Marvelous Painting': the Erotic Dimension of Sa'di's Praise Poetry;” and "Sultan Maḥmūd's New Garden in Balkh: An Exercise in Literary Archaeology for the Study of Ghaznawid Ephemeral Architecture." | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present with John Ghazvinian | Dr. John Ghazvinian discusses his recent book America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present (Knopf, 2021). In recent times, the United States and Iran have seemed closer to war than peace, but that is not where their story began. When America was in its infancy, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams turned to the history of the Persian Empire as they looked for guidance on how to run their new country. And in the following century, Iranian newspapers heralded America as an ideal that their own government might someday emulate. How, then, did the two nations become the adversaries that they are today? In his new book, Dr. Ghazvinian traces the complex story of America and Iran over three centuries. Drawing on years of research conducted in both countries—including access to Iranian government archives rarely available to Western scholars—he leads us through the four seasons of US-Iranian relations: from the spring of mutual fascination, where Iran, sick of duplicitous Britain and Russia interfering in its affairs, sought a relationship with the United States, to the long, dark winter of hatred that we are yet to see end. A revealing account, America and Iran lays bare when, where and how it all went wrong—and why it didn't have to be this way. John Ghazvinian is Executive Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an author, historian and former journalist, specializing in the history of US-Iran relations. Since 2008, he has been under contract with Knopf to write America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present—a comprehensive new survey of the bilateral relationship, based on years of archival research in both Iran and the United States. He is also author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil (Harcourt, 2007), as well as coeditor of American and Muslim Worlds before 1900 (Bloomsbury, 2020). He has written for such publications as Newsweek, The Nation, the Sunday Times and the Huffington Post, and has taught modern Middle East history at a number of colleges and universities in the Philadelphia area. He earned his doctorate in history at Oxford University and was the recipient of a "Public Scholar" fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2016-2017, as well as a fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation's special initiative on Islam in 2009-2010. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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In Solitary: Then the Fish Swallowed Him with Amir Arian | Amir Ahmadi Arian discusses his first novel in English, Then the Fish Swallowed Him published by HarperCollins in 2020. “Yunus Turabi, a bus driver in Tehran, leads an unremarkable life. A solitary man since the unexpected deaths of his father and mother years ago, he is decidedly apolitical—even during the driver’s strike and its bloody end. But everyone has their breaking point, and Yunus has reached his. Handcuffed and blindfolded, he is taken to the infamous Evin prison for political dissidents. Inside this stark, strangely ordered world, his fate becomes entwined with Hajj Saeed, his personal interrogator. The two develop a disturbing yet interdependent relationship, with each playing his assigned role in a high stakes psychological game of cat and mouse, where Yunus endures a mind-bending cycle of solitary confinement and interrogation. In their startlingly intimate exchanges, Yunus’s life begins to unfold—from his childhood memories growing up in a freer Iran to his heartbreaking betrayal of his only friend. As Yunus struggles to hold on to his sanity and evade Saeed’s increasingly undeniable accusations, he must eventually make an impossible choice: continue fighting or submit to the system of lies upholding Iran’s power.” Amir Arian is a critically acclaimed Iranian writer currently living in New York City. He has published two novels and a book of nonfiction in Iran, and translated novels by Paul Auster, Cormac McCarthy, P.D. James, and E.L. Doctorow from English to Persian. In English his short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Paris Review, London Review of Books, Guernica, and Lithub, among others. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Book Talk: Man of My Time with Dalia Sofer | Set in Tehran and New York, Man of My Time is the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, who is as alienated from himself as he is from the world. After decades of working with ambivalence for the Iranian government, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father. Tucked into a mint tin in Hamid’s pocket, the ashes propel him into an excavation of a lifetime of betrayals, forcing him to confront his past. Exploring variations of loss, Man of My Time is not only about family and memory, but also about the relationship between captor and captive, country and citizen, and individual and history. Sofer will discuss the depiction of conflict not as a clash of opponents, but as an interconnection of two entities; this includes the conflict of each character with him or herself. She will also address the fragmentation caused by conflict, the impossibility to tell a fixed story, and the impulse to search for the origin of things when no knowable origins exist. Finally, she will speak about creating a narrative that reflects the brokenness of a world—and a man—in search of their own humanity. Dalia Sofer is the author of the novels Man of My Time (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)—a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and The Septembers of Shiraz (Ecco Press, 2007)—selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and published in sixteen countries. A recipient of a Whiting Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Sami Rohr Choice Award, she has contributed essays and reviews to various publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The LA Review of Books, and The Believer. Born in Tehran, Iran, Sofer currently lives in New York City. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Ala Mohseni Discusses His New Documentary "Ayyar e Tanha" About Bahram Beyzaie | Filmmaker Ala Mohseni will discuss his new documentary "Ayyar e Tanha." It documents the particular situation in Iran that forced an acclaimed and distinguished artist like Bahram Beyzaie to leave his homeland and live in exile. Please watch the film at your convenience and join for the live discussion: https://www.radiofarda.com/a/30905487.html Please note: the film and the conversation are in Persian/Farsi. Born in Tehran, Iran, Ala Mohseni began pursuing his interest in theater in 1991, while studying physics. He acted in plays by several well-known Iranian directors, including Bahram Beyzaie; he then completed a course in filmmaking at the IYCS (Iranian Youth Cinema Society). In 2004, he directed “The Life”, a documentary on one of the pioneers of Iranian cinema, Nosrat Karimi. This film has been prohibited to screen in Iran. He later attended a masterclass workshop by the legendary Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, then a BBC documentary workshop. Ala Mohseni’s 2008 documentary “My City Pizza”, about the huge popularity of pizza in the Iranian capital Tehran, was praised for its comedy and awarded in festivals around the world. The IDFA awarded Mohseni the Jan Vrijman Fund in 2009 for his project “Hidden Kisses” – a film he was unable to complete because of civil strife in Iran after the 2009 presidential election. He moved to California a year later and earned an MFA in Film at the California College of the Arts. His latest films are “Kiosk, A Generation Destroyed By Madness”, “My Stealthy Freedom”, "Metamorphosis, Iranian Style", “Kamran Tull”. Bahram Beyzaie is one of Iran's most acclaimed filmmakers, playwrights, and scholars of the history of Iranian theater, both secular and religious. He is currently the Daryabari Visiting Lecturer in the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Iranian Women: The Achilles Heel of the Islamic Republic of Iran with Homa Sarshar | Homa Sarshar discusses her life and work, and the role of women in Iran. Homa Sarshar is a published author, award-winning journalist, writer, and media personality. She is the author of four books and the editor of eleven other volumes, including five volumes of the Iranian Women's Studies Foundation Journal and four volumes of The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews. Her latest book Sha’ban Jafari was the number one best seller Persian book in Iran and abroad in the year 2003. From 1964 to 1978, she worked as a correspondent, reporter, and columnist for Zan-e Ruz weekly magazine and Kayhan daily newspaper in Iran. During this period, she also worked as a television producer, director, and talk show host for National Iranian Radio & Television. In 1978, Sarshar moved to Los Angeles where she resumed her career as a freelance journalist, radio and television producer, and on-air host. An established women’s rights activist, she served a five-year term on the board of the Iranian Women Studies Foundation, has worked with Human Rights Watch, her two-volume memoir (Dar Koocheh Paskoocheh Ha-ye Ghorbat) was the first publication of a Jewish Iranian memoir, one of the first Persian memoirs after the revolution published outside Iran, as well as one of the very few examples of memoir-writing by an Iranian woman at the time of its publication. In 1995, she founded the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History (CIJOH) in Los Angeles, a nonprofit organization that gathered over 1,600 historically significant photographs and documents, and recorded over 120 oral interviews with elders and leaders of the community. In 2006, she founded Honar Foundation to provide social and financial support to all Iranian American artists in need to ensure that these unique talents are served in the best way possible and their lives are improved. Throughout her 50-year career with Iranian and Iranian-American print, radio, and television, Sarshar has done more than 3000 interviews and has produced and anchored as many radio and television programs. She has also written, directed, and produced a collection of twenty video documentaries on exiled Iranian writers, poets, and artists, some of which have been acquired by the Library of Congress for the library’s permanent audiovisual archive. | 4/27/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Book Talk: Out of Mesopotamia with Salar Abdoh | April 15, 2021 An unprecedented glimpse into "endless war" from a Middle Eastern perspective, Salar Abdoh’s novel, "Out of Mesopotamia," follows in the tradition of the Western canon of martial writers–from Hemingway and Orwell to Tim O'Brien and Philip Caputo–but then subverts and expands upon the genre before completely blowing it apart. Drawing from his firsthand experience of being embedded with Shia militias on the ground in Iraq and Syria, Abdoh gives agency to the voiceless while offering a meditation on war that is moving, humane, darkly funny, and resonantly true. Salar Abdoh was born in Iran and splits his time between Tehran and New York City. He is the author of the novels "Tehran at Twilight," "The Poet Game," and "Opium"; and he is the editor of "Tehran Noir." He teaches in the MFA program at the City College of New York. Out of Mesopotamia is his latest novel. | 4/26/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Blue Logos and Women's Wisdom with Shahrnush Parsipur | October 15, 2020 Shahrnush Parsipur was born in Tehran, Iran and received her BA in Sociology from the University of Tehran. She wrote her first novel at the age of 28, Sag va Zememstaneh Boland (The Dog and the Long Winter) and later that year was imprisoned for several months for protesting the execution of two activists. She wrote her second novel in France, Majerahayeh Sadeh va Kuchake Ruheh Derakht (Plain and Small Adventures of the Spirit of the Tree) in 1977.She has been imprisoned several times in Iran for her writings which often focus on themes of women, gender, and sexuality. After one period in prison, she published her first novel Touba va Maanayeh Shab (Touba and the Meaning of Night) in 1980. She also wrote a memoir recalling her time in prison (the English translation is titled Kissing the Sword). In 1990 she wrote Zanan-e bedun-e Mardan (Women Without Men), a collection of short stories. Her other works include: Aqle Abi (The Blue Reason), Shiva, Bar Baaleh Baad Neshestan (On the Wings of Wind), Adabeh Sarfeh Chai Dar Hozooreh Gorg (Tea Ceremony in Presence of Wolf), Avizeh-hayeh Bolour (Crystalline Pendants), Men From Various Civilizations, and Asieh dar Miane Do Donya (Asieh between Two Worlds). Her books have been translated into several languages. She has also written more than 400 articles about modern Iranian literature in different literary publications. Her book Blue Logos has just been translated in English by M.R. Ghanoonparvar. The prominent photographer and filmmaker, Shirin Neshat, created a full-length film based on Women Without Men and a short film project based on Touba and the Meaning of the Night. She has received numerous awards and holds an honorary doctorate from Brown University. She will be in conversation with Dr. Abbas Milani about her recent book, her work, and women's wisdom, in the ongoing series on Iranian women. | 2/4/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Book Talk: Disoriental with Negar Djavadi | Négar Djavadi was born in Iran in 1969 to a family of intellectuals opposed to the regimes both of the Shah, then of Khomeini. She arrived in France at the age of eleven, having crossed the mountains of Kurdistan on horseback with her mother and sister. She is a screenwriter and lives in Paris. Disoriental is her first novel. Her second novel comes out in France in September 2020. | 2/4/2021 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Film Screening and Panel Discussion: NASRIN | NASRIN is an immersive portrait of attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, one of the world’s most prominent human rights activists and political prisoners. Written and directed by Jeff Kaufman, produced by Marcia Ross, and secretly filmed in Iran by women and men who risked arrest to make it, the film also tells the story of Iran’s remarkably resilient women’s rights movement. Nasrin has long fought for the rights of women, children, LGBT prisoners, religious minorities, journalists and artists, and those facing the death penalty. She was arrested in June 2018 for representing women who were protesting Iran’s mandatory hijab law, and she was sentenced to 38 years in prison, plus 148 lashes. From prison, she has continued to challenge the authorities. An Amnesty International petition calling for her release received over a million signatures from 200 countries. Panelists: Shirin Ebadi, Jeff Kaufman, Reza Khandan, Abbas Milani, Marietje Schaake | 10/23/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Muslim Women and Political Leadership - Shahla Haeri | "Political mobility and freedom to choose are the quintessential mandate of women in the second decade of the 21st century. From Northwest Africa to Southeast Asia, and anywhere in-between Muslim women are mobilizing, joining their voices and marshalling their resources, determined to have a seat at their society’s political table. Increasingly educated and well informed, women have challenged the rigid patriarchal constructions of gender (in)justice, political/legal inequalities, and gender hierarchy in the Muslim world. Not wishing to feed the tired universalized colonial narrative of victimized and passive ‘Muslim women,’ nor willing to suffer the intolerant ‘fundamentalist’ and essentialist discourse of Islamists in their own home countries, women activists and scholars of all backgrounds have shown considerable awareness of and reflexivity to local and global political dynamics. They have questioned the male domination of political authority and monopoly of sacred knowledge and have challenged patriarchal institutions of power on both fronts. Unwilling to subordinate their piety to misogynist ‘orthodoxies,’ women scholars of Islam have pursued a two-pronged strategy: to contribute to religious knowledge, and to develop a ‘feminist theology’ based on modernist and interpretive reading of the scripture: one that is egalitarian, tolerant, and inclusive. Women’s political authority, however, has received less systematic attention; it is highly contested and fraught with tensions and contradictions, and has faced a much tougher patriarchal backlash from within the Muslim world. Women’s political participation and leadership is indispensable for meaningful national development, and women’s empowerment must be on the political, legal and social reform agendas." Shahla Haeri is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and a former director of the Women's Studies Program at Boston University, one of the pioneers of Iranian Anthropology, and has produced cutting-edge ethnographies of Iran, Pakistan and the Muslim world. Her landmark books include her classic ethnography, Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi’i Iran (1989/2014), translated into Arabic and reprinted frequently, highlighting the tenacious but secretive custom of temporary marriage in Iran; No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women (2002/2004) widens the ethnographic scope to make visible lives of educated and professional Muslim women. Her latest book, The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority, Gender (Cambridge University Press), is a pioneering book on the extraordinary lives and legacies of a few remarkable Muslim women sovereigns from across the Muslim world. Dr. Haeri’s academic and creative oeuvre includes her video documentary, “Mrs. President: Women and Political Leadership in Iran” (2002, 46 min.) focusing on six women presidential contenders during the Iranian presidential election of 2001. She is the recipient of many fellowships, grants, and postdoctoral fellowships. | 10/23/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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SGS Summer Film Festival: Chicken with Plums - Marjane Satrapi | This year the Stanford Global Studies Summer Film Festival will be held virtually. Join us from your home as we watch seven films from around the world that focus on the theme “Love in the Time of Cinema.” The Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies invite you to watch Chicken with Plums from home at a time that works for your schedule, then join us on Zoom for a discussion with the writer and co-director, Marjane Satrapi. Please RSVP to receive the Zoom information. About Marjane Satrapi: Marjane Satrapi is the author of Persepolis, Persepolis 2, Embroideries, Chicken with Plums, and several children’s books. She co-wrote and co-directed the animated feature film version of Persepolis, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. She regularly contributes to magazines and newspapers throughout the world. About the film: Directed by Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi (France, Germany, Belgium, 2011). Watch the trailer here. Synopsis: Teheran, 1958. Since his beloved violin was broken, Nasser Ali Khan, one of the most renowned musicians of his day, has lost all taste for life. Finding no instrument worthy of replacing it, he decides to confine himself to bed to await death. As he hopes for its arrival, he plunges into deep reveries, with dreams as melancholic as they are joyous, taking him back to his youth and even to a conversation with Azraël, the Angel of Death, who reveals the future of his children... As pieces of the puzzle gradually fit together, the poignant secret of his life comes to light: a wonderful story of love which inspired his genius and his music... | 10/23/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Iranian Women's Movement: A Conversation with Mansoureh Shojaee | Mansoureh Shojaee has been one of the leaders of the Iranian women’s rights movement for over 20 years and involved in politics for more than 30 years. She was a librarian at the National Library in Tehran for 22 years and worked as a journalist, freelance writer and literary translator for French. She will discuss the women’s rights movement in Iran with Dr. Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Studies at Stanford. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A session with viewers. The event will be live-translated from Persian/Farsi to English. From 1994 to 2004, she worked with blind children and enabled them to access literature by teaching them the use of audio books, as a part of the Children’s Book Council of Iran (for which she received the 2010 Testimonial Statue Honors Award). For her efforts, she received the 2010 Testimonial Statute Honors Award from the IBBYP. In 2000, Ms. Shojaee co-founded (with the journalist, feminist and political activist Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani and other like-minded women) the women’s cultural center Markaze Farhangi-ye Zanab, where she opened the Women’s Library Sadige Dolatabadi in 2003. She also worked with other organizations including UNICEF to develop traveling libraries geared towards Iranian women and children. A close confidant of Shirin Ebadi (the Iranian 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate living in exile in London), she was committed to fulfilling Ebadi’s dream of an Iranian women’s museum, however the project was banned in its early stages. In 2008, she started The Iranian Women’s Movement Museum, a research project, with a group of women activists, artists, and academics. She is also the founder of the online platform the Iran Women’s Movement Documentation Center. She is one of the creators of the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality and co-founder of the website The Feminist School. Because of her dedicated efforts, she was imprisoned several times in Iran, most recently in 2009. After a month, she was released on bail and was free to leave Iran. Having already suffered a four-year travel ban, she promptly went into exile. She is the author of Sharzade’s Sisters: Women in Iran (2013). She continues to work as a women’s rights activist, writer and journalist while she remains in exile. | 9/9/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Iranian Women's Movement: A Conversation with Mahnaz Afkhami | Mahnaz Afkhami will discuss her experience with the Iranian women’s movement. Conversation will be in English. Mahnaz Afkhami is the founder, president, and CEO of Women’s Learning Partnership and former Minister for Women’s Affairs in Iran. Afkhami has been a leading advocate of women's rights for more than four decades, having founded and served as director and president of several international non-governmental organizations that focus on advancing women's status. Afkhami also serves on advisory boards and steering committees of a number of national and international organizations including the Freer/Sackler Galleries of The Smithsonian Institution, the Foundation for Iranian Studies, The Global Fund for Women, Women’s Learning Partnership, Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, and the World Movement for Democracy. She has appeared on the BBC, CNN, and PBS and in numerous television and radio interviews on NPR, BBC Persian, VOA Persian and other international outlets. Afkhami’s publications have been widely translated and distributed internationally, including Women in Exile; Faith and Freedom: Women’s Human Rights in the Muslim World; In the Eye of the Storm: Women and the Law in Iran; Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women; Leading to Action: A Political Participation Handbook for Women; Beyond Equality: A Manual for Human Rights Defenders; and Victories Over Violence: Ensuring Safety for Women and Girls, among others. | 9/9/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Iranian Women's Movement: A Conversation with Mehrangiz Kar | Professor Mehrangiz Kar, a human rights lawyer from Iran, is an internationally recognized writer, speaker and activist who advocates for the defense of women’s and human rights in Iran and throughout the Islamic world. A common theme in her work is the tension between Iranian law and the core principles of human rights and human dignity. She will discuss the women’s rights movement in Iran with Dr. Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Studies at Stanford. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A session with viewers. The event will be live-translated from Persian/Farsi to English. In 2000, Professor Kar and sixteen other Iranian journalists, activists and intellectuals attended a conference held at the Heinrich Böll Institute in Berlin entitled “Iran After the Elections,” where Professor Kar made remarks about the urgent need for constitutional reform. Upon her return to Iran, she was arrested, taken to Evin Prison, and leveled with various charges, from “acting against national security” to “spreading propaganda against the regime of the Islamic Republic.” On 13 January 2001, she was sentenced to four years imprisonment. Currently, she is the Senior Technical Advisor for Rule of Law at Siamak Pourzand Foundation. She was formerly a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Brown University, University of Cape Town, Wellesley College, California State University Northridge (CSUN) and the Brookings Institution. She practiced law in the Islamic Republic of Iran for 22 years and has published numerous books and articles on issues related to law, gender equality and democracy in Iran and abroad. Professor Kar has received several international awards for her human rights endeavors including the Democracy Award from the National Endowment for Democracy, Ludovic-TrarieuxInternational Human Rights Prize, and the Human Rights First Award. Her books published in Iran related to this topic include: Women’s Participation in Politics: Obstacles and Possibilities (2001), Violence Against Women in Iran (2000), Legal Structure of the Family System in Iran (1999), and Elimination of Gender Discrimination: A Comparison of the Convention On Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and Iran’s Contemporary Laws (1999). Her book, Violence Against Women in Iran (2000), has become essential reading and a reference for research on violence against women in Iran. In recent years, she has also published a number of journal articles and book chapters in English. This event is part of the ongoing conversation on the women’s movement in Iran that has been a part of the Iranian Studies Program since its inception. Conversations with Simin Behbahani, Ziba Mir-Hossaini, Farzaneh Milani, Shahrnush Parsipur, Mahshid Amirshahy, Masih Alinejad, and Jila Baniyaghoob, are just a few of the many voices we have hosted over the years. This important subject will continue to be a part of our programming. | 7/13/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Saadi and Humanism | Abbas Milani discusses his new book Saadi and Humanism (written with Maryam Mirzadeh, published by Zemestan Press in Iran). The book is in Persian/Farsi, the conversation was in English. | 7/13/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Iran in the International System | Heinz Gärtner and Mitra Shahmoradi discuss their recent book Iran in the International System: Iran between Great Powers and Great Ideas (Routledge, January 2020). They are joined by Abbas Milani who will speak about his chapter in the book. Drawing on Iran’s history and its relations with great powers and its regional neighbors, this book addresses the question of how much continuity and/or change there is in Iranian international relations since the Iranian revolution. The conversation will be in English. Iran has often been at the center of the political debate on both the Gulf region and the transatlantic relations. Following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Viennese nuclear agreement in May 2018 signed by the five permanent members of the UN-Security Council in 2015, the relationship between Iran and the world entered a new phase. With high expectations within Iran for improved relations with Europe, the authors of this book call for a new and innovative approach to be undertaken by the Iranian leadership towards the U.S. and Europe if Iran is to find a role for itself within regional and international structures. | 7/13/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Iranian Women's Movement: A Conversation with Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani | Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, a member of a family long considered a pillar of the Islamic Republic of Iran, became a prisoner of conscience in that regime and is now a defender of equal rights for women—one of the many fascinating transformations in Iran in recent years. She discusses the evolution and future of the women’s rights movement in Iran. The conversation will be live-translated from Persian/Farsi to English. An active Iranian women’s rights activist, Ms. Rafsanjani was the founder and publisher of Zan—the first publication after the 1979 revolution dedicated to the cause of women—and is acclaimed for her role in preserving women’s athletics from the onslaught of conservative clergy. She earned a Master of Laws degree in international human rights from Birmingham City University. She also served as a member of the Iranian parliament from 1996 to 2000. This event is part of the ongoing conversation on the women’s movement in Iran that has been a part of the Iranian Studies Program since its inception. Conversations with Simin Behbahani, Ziba Mir-Hossaini, Farzaneh Milani, Shahrnush Parsipur, Mahshid Amirshahy, Masih Alinejad, and Jila Baniyaghoob, are just a few of the many voices we have hosted over the years. This important subject will continue to be a part of our programming. | 7/13/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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An Overview of the COVID-19 Situation: Lessons Learned from Iran | April 22, 2020 Arash Alaei, Kamiar Alaei Discussion will include a brief overview of the current situation of the coronavirus in Iran followed by a health policy analysis of: • When, how and why the virus entered Iran; • Whether it was preventable or manageable at early stages; • What was the initial reaction of policymakers in Iran; • A briefing about the controversy among stakeholders on when and how to respond; • How and why the initial policies changed over time and the extent to which they were politically motivated. Kamiar Alaei, MD, DrPH and Arash Alaei, MD are global health policy experts who have been working in conservative social settings for two decades. They are the co-President of the Institute for International Health and Education working in several countries in the Middle East and Central Asia. They co-founded the first ‘Triangular Clinic’ for three target groups in Iran (drug users, HIV patients, and STD cases), documented by the World Health Organization as a ‘Best Practice Model’. In recognition of their work, Drs. Alaei were awarded: Jonathan Mann award for Global Health and Human Rights by the Global Health Council; World Health Organization/PAHO Award for Health and Human Rights; Inaugural Elizabeth Taylor Award sponsored by the International AIDS Society and amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research in recognition of efforts to advocate for human rights in the field of HIV; and the Heinz R. Pagels Award for human rights by the New York Academy of Sciences. They have authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles in prestigious publications including the Lancet Global Health and the British Medical Journal. They have been featured and interviewed by major academic journals such as Nature, Science and the Lancet. They recently co-authored "How Iran Completely and Utterly Botched Its Response to the Coronavirus" in the New York Times. | 5/8/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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From COVID19 to Cholera: Repeating Patterns in Iranian Pandemic History | Dr. Amir Afkhami April 16, 2020 Why has the novel coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic been so widespread and deadly in Iran and what are the consequences of the outbreak? This lecture will attempt to answer these questions by presenting a timeline of the COVID19 outbreak in Iran and the historic and political determinants that shape Tehran’s public health policy against the pandemic. Amir A. Afkhami, MD, PhD, is an associate professor with joint appointments in psychiatry, global health, and history at the George Washington University. He is also the director of preclinical psychiatric education at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He is the author of A Modern Contagion: Imperialism and Public Health in Iran's Age of Cholera (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). Previously, he served on the legislative staff of US Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and he led the U.S. State Department's Iraq Mental Health Initiative to rebuild Iraq’s mental health delivery capabilities. | 4/23/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Rereading the Ten Nights | Dr. Mandana Zandian lectured at Stanford on March 5, 2020. In October 1977, the German-Iranian Cultural Association in Tehran hosted ten nights of literature reading sessions, organized by the Iranian Writers Association. This series of literature readings, performed by 60 writers, is considered as an early manifestation of a public expression of political protest against the Pahlavi regime. Rereading the Ten Nights is a collection of interviews with some of the writers who attended the event, 36 years later. Mandana Zandian is a graduate of Shahid Beheshti Medical School in 1997. She works at the Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and is currently engaged in research on aggressive types of advanced cancers. Dr. Zandian, also a published poet, author, and journalist, serves on the editorial board of the Rahavard quarterly journal and collaborates with Homa Sarshar in her weekly Radio Programs. A selection of Zandian’s love poems is translated into English by Professor Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak as An Eyeful of Earth, An Eyeful of Ocean, Los Angeles, 2014. Her books include: “Omid o Azadi” (Hope and Freedom), on the life and works of Iraj Gorgin, Los Angeles, 2012; “Baz-khani-e Dah-Shab” (The Ten-Nights Revisited), Los Angeles, 2014; and her latest book titled Ehsan Yar Shater: an Interview with Mandana Zandian, Los Angeles, 2016. Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts. | 3/27/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic" by Narges Bajoghli | Professor Narges Bajoghli discussed her recent book "Iran Reframed" at Stanford on February 20, 2020. “An inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the debates around the future of the Islamic Republic. More than half of Iran's citizens were not alive at the time of the 1979 Revolution. Now entering its fifth decade in power, the Iranian regime faces the paradox of any successful revolution: how to transmit the commitments of its political project to the next generation. New media ventures supported by the Islamic Republic attempt to win the hearts and minds of younger Iranians. Yet members of this new generation—whether dissidents or fundamentalists—are increasingly skeptical of these efforts. Iran Reframed offers unprecedented access to those who wield power in Iran as they debate and define the future of the Republic. Over ten years, Narges Bajoghli met with men in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Ansar Hezbollah, and Basij paramilitary organizations to investigate how their media producers developed strategies to court Iranian youth. Readers come to know these men—what the regime means to them and their anxieties about the future of their revolutionary project. Contestation over how to define the regime underlies all their efforts to communicate with the public. This book offers a multilayered story about what it means to be pro-regime in the Islamic Republic, challenging everything we think we know about Iran and revolution.” Narges Bajoghli is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, and has appeared as a commentator on NPR, PBS, and the BBC. She is the director of the documentary The Skin That Burns, screened at The Hague, Hiroshima, Jaipur, and film festivals throughout the United States. | 2/26/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"In the Presence of the Secret of Motherland" by Reza Farokhfal | On October 15, 2019, Reza Farokhfal discussed his recent book "In the Presence of the Secret of Motherland" and Iran and "Iranianity" in Persian literature. Reza Farokhfal is a published writer in his home country of Iran. His fictional works as well as his works in literary theory and cultural studies have appeared in various literary periodicals and anthologies. His latest book, Of Neda’s Gaze, a collection of essays on Iranian literature and culture was released this year. He has taught Persian Language at McGill University (Canada), University of Wisconsin in Madison, and at Colorado University in Boulder. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book Persian: Here and Now, a course book in two volumes for Farsi (Persian) language which has been adopted by the Stanford University Persian language program amongst other prestigious academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad. In this monograph, he has offered a reading of the main trends in classic (canonical) and modern Persian literature demonstrating the deep indigenous roots of “Iranianity”—the Iranian national identity. He argues that “Iranianity” was not invented in the context of the so-called “colonial modernization” of a peripheral country. Rather, Iranian national identity existed as a remembrance in the Persian literary tradition long before the formation of the modern nation-state of Iran in the early twentieth century. In reading the Persian literary texts, Professor Farokhfal has applied a post-structural literary theoretical framework—inspired by Michail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, along with the writings of theorists such as Ernest Renan, Benedict Anderson and Étienne Balibar—to redefine Iran as a nation through history. Professor Farokhfal has offered a link to download his new book for free order to make it more widely available and avoid censorship by the Iranian government (see iranianstudies.stanford.edu for more information) | 1/30/2020 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets | Najmieh Batmanglij, hailed as “The Grande Dame of Iranian Cooking” by The Washington Post, has spent the past 40 years cooking, traveling, and adapting authentic Persian recipes to tastes and techniques in the West. Her celebrated cook books include Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey, and her most recent book Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets. Najmieh is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier and lives in Washington, DC, where she teaches Persian and Silk Road cooking, and consults with restaurants around the world. In this talk, Najmieh discusses her most recent cookbook, selected as one of the 19 best cookbooks of Autumn 2018 by The New York Times. Description of the book: “Najmieh takes us with her on an extraordinary culinary journey: from the daily fish market in Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf, where she and her host buy and cook a 14-pound grouper in a tamarind, cilantro, and garlic sauce, to the heart of historical Isfahan, in central Iran, where she prepares lamb necks in a yogurt, saffron, and candied orange peel sauce topped with caramelized barberries. Traveling north to the Caspian Sea, she introduces us to the authentic Gilaki version of slow-cooked duck in a pomegranate and walnut sauce, served over smoked rice; and the unique flavors of a duck-egg omelet with smoked eggplant and baby garlic. Lingering in the north, in tribal Kurdistan, she treats us to lamb-and-bulgur meatballs filled with caramelized onions and raisins in a saffron sauce. Dropping south, to Bandar Abbas on the coast, she teases our palate with rice cooked in date juice and served with spicy fish, while in Baluchistan she cooks spiced goat in a pit overnight and celebrates the age-old method of making bread in hot ashes.At every village and off-the-beaten-track community, Najmieh unearths traditional recipes and makes surprising new discoveries, giving us a glimpse along the way of the places where many of the ingredients for the recipes are grown. She treks through the fields and orchards of Iran, showing us saffron being picked in Khorasan and pomegranates in Yazd, dates harvested by the Persian Gulf, pistachios in Kerman, and tea and rice by the Caspian.” | 12/18/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey" by Mikhal Dekel | Mikhal Dekel discusses her most recent book, "Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey." Beginning in March 1942, Iran became a place of refuge to over one hundred thousand Polish citizens—Catholic but also Jewish—who joined other Jewish refugees already there. Professor Dekel, whose father was a child refugee in Tehran, will discuss the circumstances that brought him and others to Iran, the reception they received there, the arrival of Jewish aid organizations, and the mutual impact of refugees and host country on each other. Mikhal Dekel is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the City College and the CUNY Graduate Center and Director of CCNY’s Rifkind Center for Humanities and the Arts. She is the recipient of many awards—including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation and the Lady Davis Foundation—and is the author of three books: Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey (W. W. Norton 2019); Oedipus in Kishinev (Bialik Institute, 2014) and The Universal Jew (Northwestern UP, 2011). Her articles, translations, and blogs have appeared in many publications, including the Journal of Comparative Literature, English Literary History, Jewish Social Studies and Callaloo, among others. | 11/26/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Hafiz and His Contemporaries" by Dominic Parviz Brookshaw | Dominic Parviz Brookshaw is Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of Oxford, and Senior Research Fellow in Persian at Wadham College, Oxford. From 2011-2013 he was Assistant Professor of Persian Literature and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Professor Brookshaw currently serves on the Editorial Board of Middle Eastern Literatures and, for a decade (2004-2014), he served as Assistant Editor for Iranian Studies. He is a former member of both the Board of the International Society for Iranian Studies, and the Governing Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies. In this talk, Professor Brookshaw discusses his monograph, Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance, and Patronage in Fourteenth-century Iran, published in February 2019 by Bloomsbury. About the talk: For more than eight centuries, Shiraz has been synonymous with fine Persian poetry. Dubbed the Abode of Knowledge and the Tower of Saints, Shiraz has often been read through a reductive pietistic lens by those who posit a Sufistic underpinning for its poetics, and who ignore (or actively seek to erase) the profane dimensions of the city’s vibrant literary culture. In the immediate post-Mongol period, panegyric odes written in praise of Shiraz and its rulers formed the backbone of the lyric poetry produced in the city, and served as vehicles for a chauvinistic Shirazi propaganda that targeted other major centers of Persian literary activity in the region, primarily Tabriz, Baghdad, and Isfahan. In his praise poetry infused as it is with the homonormative aesthetics of the Persian ghazal, Hafiz presents Shiraz not only as paradise on earth, but as an irresistible, all-captivating beloved. Hafiz promoted the idea of the cultural superiority of Shiraz through their insistent claim that the poetry produced within its urban fabric forms the standard that all Persian poets must strive for, whether they be players within the same literary network spanning Iran and Iraq, or poets active far beyond the old borders of the Ilkhanid realm. | 11/26/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"All the Saffron We Carried with Us" by Naz Deravian | Naz Deravian is a James Beard Award nominated author of Bottom of the Pot: Persian Recipes and Stories (Flatiron Books). She is the recipient of The IACP Julia Child First Book Award, presented by The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, Saveur, O Magazine, and Montecristo Magazine. She has also been profiled in The New York Times and Bon Appetit magazine, among others. Ms. Deravian was born in Iran, she grew up in Canada and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. | 10/24/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Art of Iranian Classical Music" by Parissa | April 25, 2019 Speaker: Parissa Parissa, the grande dame of classical Persian music, led a discussion/workshop on the history, context, and purpose of Iranian classical music. Parissa is known for her extraordinary vocal ability and style. She is the most prominent and influential Iranian female classical singer of the past fifty years. Parissa studied the repertoire of radif and old tasnifs with Mahmoud Karimi and Abdollah Davami, two of the most celebrated masters of Persian vocal music. She worked for Iran's National Radio and Television Broadcasting and the Ministry of Culture for several years. After the 1979 revolution, she was no longer allowed to perform in public in Iran. Over the past 40 years, her international profile has expanded with performances at festivals and concerts around the world, as well as teaching in academic institutions. Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts. | 10/4/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iran: the Islamic Regime's Resilience under Pressure" by Amin Saikal | The Islamic Republic of Iran has been in the eyes of the storm ever since its foundation four decades ago. Initially, some analysts could not have confidence in its durability, but it has endured many domestic and foreign policy challenges. Despite being at loggerheads with the United States and some of its regional allies for most of its life, it has remained defiant and resilient. However, in the era of President Donald Trump, who has withdrawn the US from the July 2015 multi-lateral nuclear agreement and has imposed the harshest sanctions ever, the Republic is in the grip of serious economic difficulties, with political implications. Yet, Trump's policy actions are unlikely to bring the Republic’s Islamic regime to its knees, just as sanctions could not cause the demise of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. However, the same cannot be said about the Iranian society, which is bearing the brunt of Trump’s actions. Amin Saikal AM, FASSA is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University. | 5/28/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"A Modern Contagion: Cholera's Impact on Iranian History" by Amir Afkhami | Amir A. Afkhami presents an overview of pandemic cholera’s seminal role in the emergence and development of modernity in Iran during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This includes details on cholera’s transformative impact on the country’s governance and perspectives on medicine, disease, and public health. It also sheds light on how cholera shaped Iran's globalization and diplomacy and how it triggered revolutionary events such as the Tobacco Protest and the Constitutional Revolution. His presentation challenges the long held historical assumptions on the universal role of safe water and sanitation in ending the recurrence and severity of cholera and shape our discussion around what Iran’s historical experience with cholera can teach us about contemporary public health questions. Amir A. Afkhami, MD, PhD, is an associate professor with joint appointments in psychiatry, global health, and history at the George Washington University. He is also the director of preclinical psychiatric education at the George Washington University School of Medicine. Afkhami's doctoral level education in both history and medicine has allowed him to take a multidisciplinary approach to historical scholarship and contemporary challenges in public health as an advisor to the U.S. Departments of State, Defense, and the U.S. Senate. He planned and led the U.S. State Department's Iraq Mental Health Initiative to rebuild Iraq’s mental health delivery capabilities. He also served on the legislative staff of US Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), where he helped with the development and passage of the Excellence in Mental Health Act. Prior to joining GWU, Afkhami was a lecturer in the global history of public health at Yale University. | 5/28/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Pooya Azadi: Moving Toward a New Equilibrium in Iran | Dr. Pooya Azadi, Stanford Iran 2040 project manager, presented an overview of the research outcomes as well as his personal experience in managing the project. Established in 2016 in the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, the Stanford Iran 2040 Project serves as a hub for scholars—particularly in the Iranian diaspora—to conduct research on the future of Iran. The team conducts research on a wide array of topics related to the future economic development of Iran, including governance, population, macroeconomic policy, oil and gas, water, agriculture, and the scientific output of Iran's researchers. | 4/4/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Mutual Radicalization: How Groups and Nations Drive Each Other to Extremes | Professor Fathali M. Moghddam discusses how radicalization has become a serious global problem. The talk explores mutual radicalization, where groups and nations push each other to extremes. Drawing from well-established psychological principles, a model of mutual radicalization is presented and international and national case studies are used as illustrative examples. Fathali M. Moghaddam is Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science and Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University. He is Editor-in-Chief of the APA journal 'Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology'. His most recent book is Mutual Radicalization: How Groups and Nations Drive Each Other to Extremes. Talk was given at Stanford University as part of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies quarterly lecture series on January 31, 2019. | 4/4/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Iran, Israel, And The U.S. In A Changing Middle East | Talk by David Menashri at Stanford University's Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies on December 4, 2018. Co-sponsored by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. David Menashri is professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and Senior Research Fellow at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies and the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. He founded and was the first of Director the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies in Israel. | 3/19/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Next Revolution Will Be Led By Women" by Masih Alinejad | (Talk is in English after the first two minutes) Masih Alinejad spoke about her book "The Wind in My Hair" at Stanford University on November 29, 2018. Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist, women's rights activist, TV host of Tablet satirical news program and author of the memoir The Wind in My Hair. In 2014, Alinejad launched the “My Stealthy Freedom” campaign, one of the many such efforts inside and outside Iran against the oppression of women in the Islamic Republic. She discusses her memoir and her experience in this movement. | 3/19/2019 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Book Talk: "With Open Eyes" by Zakaria Hashemi | Zakaria Hashemi is an acclaimed director, novelist, documentary filmmaker for television, and the lead actor in Ebrahim Golestan’s “Brick and Mirror.” He discusses his book With Open Eyes (2004), a memoir-like novel describing his experiences as a filmmaker intimately involved in the Iran-Iraq war. Hashemi was discovered by Farough Farrokzad and introduced to Mr. Golestan; their collaboration has continued for the last half century. | 11/15/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Halting Exchange: The Travel Ban's Cultural Effects | Inspired by the Kronos Quartet’s performance Music For Change: The Banned Countries, Stanford Live is partnering with the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies to bring together artists and Stanford foreign relations experts to discuss the impacts of the 2017 Executive Orders that limit travel from Muslim-majority countries to the US. How are these orders affecting the institutions that provide much needed cross-cultural exchange and understanding—from higher education to formal diplomacy—and how do we move forward? Professor Abbas Milani (Director, Iranian Studies) will lead the panel conversation, including Ambassador Michael McFaul (Director, Freeman Spogli Institute), Professor Martha Crenshaw (Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute), and David Harrington (Artistic Director, Kronos Quartet). | 11/14/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Archaeology Of A Sound: Searching For The Music Of Abdolqader Maraqi - Part 2 | Mohammadreza Darvishi was born in 1955, in Shiraz. In 1979, he graduated from the University of Tehran with honors in composition. Darvishi has taught at several universities in Iran and given many lectures all around the world. He has travelled to Iran's cities and villages for about 30 years in search for the lost roots of Iranian regional music. The fruit of this endeavor is “The encyclopedia of Iranian Musical Instruments” that received SEM’s (Society for Ethnomusicology) award for the best publication of the year on musical instruments, granted by Bruno Nettl (2002) and several other books and CDs. Another aspect of Darvishi's work in his quest of the lost roots of Iranian music and his search for the surviving compositions of Abdolqader Maraqi, the Iranian composer of the 14th century. Establishing the music ensemble of “Abdolqader Maraqi” about 10 years ago, Darvishi performed and published the works of the great composer. Apart from his vast research in the field of Iranian music and culture, Darvishi has composed a large number of pieces that have been performed by different orchestras and ensembles in Belgium, Iran, Ukraine, Russia and many other countries. | 9/24/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Semiotics Of Iranian Myths With Bahram Beyzaie Part V | Workshop with renowned Iranian film director Bahram Beyzaie at Stanford University, January-March 2013. Sponsored by the Stanford Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, and the Bita Daryabari Endowment in Persian Letters. The five series workshop based on the following topics: 2/21: THE MEANING OF SHAHNAMEH AS A SOCIAL WORK2/28: NON WRITTEN MYTHS OF PRE-SHAHNAMEH PERIOD 3/7: THE CREATION OF MANKIND AND AFTER3/14: ANALYTIC VIEW OF THE LEGEND OF ROSTAM AND SOHRAB 3/16: IRANIAN MYTHS IN TRADITIONAL SPECTACLES Bahram Beyzaie is one of the most talented, internationally acclaimed artists, scholars and public intellectuals of his generation in Iran. He has written more than thirty-five plays, and fifty screenplays. Though a film-maker for over forty years, and recognized as one of the masters of Iran’s much-celebrated new-wave of cinema, he has been allowed to make only ten feature films and four short films. But Beyzaie is not just an artist but also a scholar. His pioneering work on the history of Iranian theater remains, some forty-years after its publication, the most authoritative source on the subject. His many monographs and essays have delved into a comparative study of Iranian, Indian, Chinese and Japanese performing art traditions. He has played a critical role in the study of religious passion plays in Iran and what they can offer modern theater. He has just finished work on a lengthy manuscript on the origins of A Thousand and One Nights story. He offers an altogether new interpretation of the Indo-Iranian origins of these remarkable stories. Beyzaie was born in Tehran, in December 1938. His was a family of erudite poets and literary scholars, and it did not take him long to realize that his was to be a life in arts and aesthetics. He had a voracious appetite to read, learn and create. Myriad discursive genres and performing arts became the smithy for his unique alchemy of words and images, history and myth, the mundane and the sublime. His unique talents as an artist and his singular accomplishments as a scholar eventually combined to make him the Chair of the Dramatic Arts Department at Tehran University, where he helped train at least two generation of artists. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, he was forced to resign from the university. His unbending dedication to his art and to the dignity of artists and scholars, his unwillingness to allow ideological or political forces deform his ideas and art, his defiant desire to always speak truth to power have made of him a maverick. His direction of his own play, Marg Yazgerd (Death of Yazgard) remains today, almost three decades later, one of the most memorable and acclaimed theatric performances of the time. A film version of the play has also won much acclaim. Western audiences were first introduced to Beyzaie's talents when two of his plays were performed at the Festival du Theater des Nations, in Paris in 1963. Since then, many of his plays have been performed in theaters around the world and several of his films have won acclaim at important film festivals. His works have been translated into English, French, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic. He is currently the Daryabari Visiting Professor of Persian Letters at Stanford University. He lives in Palo Alto with his wife, Mojdeh Shamsai, herself an acclaimed actress, and their son Niassan. | 6/28/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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7th Annual Bita Prize For Literature To Mr Iraj Pezeshkzad | The Bita Daryabari Endowment in Persian Letters, with Stanford's Iranian Studies Program, presented the Bita Prize for Literature on Friday, November 7th 2014, to Iraj Pezeshkzad. With a special presentation by Parviz Sayyad. | 6/28/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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The Garden In The Carpet - The Carpet In The Garden | Lecture by Faryar Javherian on February 26, 2015. Faryar Javaherian is an Iranian architect and curator, born in Mahshad, Khorassan, raised in Paris, France and educated in the United States. She studied at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a Bachelor of Architecture with High Honors in 1973, then at MIT and Harvard where she received her Master's in Urban Design in 1976. She co-founded Gamma Consultants recognized as the leading office in Museum and Persian Garden design in Iran. Her buildings have been widely published in Iranian architectural magazines and established her as having a recognizable Iranian-Modern style. Most recently she has won the competition to build the new French School in Tehran, and is working on several museum projects. The exhibitions she has curated cover the fields of architecture, landscape, photography and cinema. She has been the Art Director for ten films including Hamoon and The Pear Tree, which are cult-films in Iranian cinema. She is the author of GARDENS OF IRAN: Ancient Wisdom, New Visions (Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art Publication, 2004) and THIRTY YEARS OF SOLITUDE (Cambridge University Publication, 2007), and numerous articles in MEMAR to which she contributed as an editor as well as other architectural magazines. She has served as Jury member on many national and international competitions, and was a member of the Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award in Architecture in2010. She has widely lectured in Iranian universities, as well as Oxford and Cambridge universities. In March 2013 she was invited by the State Department in the International Visitors Leadership Program to confer with colleagues on Museum curatorship and management. She also won the Best Designer Award in 2013 from the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization (Miras). She is presently completing the Greater Khorassan Museum in Mashahd. She is a Visiting Scholar at MIT in 2014-15. | 6/28/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Fifth Annual Bita Prize For Literature To Mr Houshang Seyhoun | The Bita Daryabari Endowment in Persian Letters, with Stanford's Iranian Studies Program, presented the Bita Prize for Literature on Thursday, November 29th, 2012, to Mr. Houshang Seyhoun. Houshang Seyoun is a renowned artist and architect known for his significant contributions to a new aesthetic of Iranian modernity and urban modernism. Born in Tehran in 1920, he received a degree in architecture from Tehran's Honarkadeh college (house of the arts). Seyoun won numerous awards and competitions in his youth that testify to his creative brilliance, including the Iranian Association of Historic Monuments competition to design a memorial for the poet Ferdowsi. Finishing his studies at Honarkadeh, where he studied under Andre Godard, Seyoun was selected as the recipient of a French government scholarship to study art in Paris. | 6/28/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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In Memory Of Amin Banani- A Life In Letters And Iranian Studies | February 25, 2014 Speaker: Sheila Banani, Firuz Kazemzadeh, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, Wali Ahmadi, John Eilts, Bahram Beyzaie and Abbas Milani. Professor Amin Banani was one of the first Iranians to receive a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. He went on to a sterling career in founding the Iranian Studies Program at UCLA, he remained an engaged Stanford Alumni and an avid supporter of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford. He not only agreed to teach a seminar at Stanford, where he hoped to bring together the many strands of his research, but generously donated his books to Stanford. In memory of his long affiliation with Stanford, we are happy to announce the launch of the Amin Banani Memorial Fund, generously donated by the Taslimi Foundation. On February 25, 2014, Mrs Sheila Banani, Firuz Kazemzadeh, Professor Emeritus at Yale, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, author and Professor, Wali Ahmadi, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, John Eilts, Middle East Curator, Stanford Green Library, Bahram Beyzaie, playwright and visiting Professor, Stanford University, and Abbas Milani will discuss the life, writings and books of Amin Banani. | 6/28/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Eighth Annual Bita Prize For Persian Arts To Dr. Ehsan Yarshater | Ehsan Yarshater is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University and Director of its Center for Iranian Studies. | 6/28/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Why Was Towfigh Permanently Banned? | Talk by Dr. Abbas Towfigh at Stanford University on April 5, 2018. Dr. Towfigh taught at several universities in Iran and is a poet, author, writer, satirist, and the former editor-in-chief of "Towfigh" satirical paper. He discusses the ban on the most influential satirical paper in modern Iranian history. For more information visit iranian-studies.stanford.edu | 6/28/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Stanford Conference On Iran- Political Elite Formation And Circulation | Presentation by Professor Mehrzad Boroujerdi on March 2, 2018 at the conference "Islamic Republic of Iran: Continuity or Change?" sponsored by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. More information: https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/ | 6/28/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Stanford Conference On Iran- Concluding Discussion | Abbas Milani, Larry Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, and Michael McFaul discuss Iran on March 2, 2018 at the conference "Islamic Republic of Iran: Continuity or Change?" sponsored by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. More information: https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/ | 6/26/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Stanford Conference On Iran- Recent Trends In The Iranian Economy | Presentation by Dr. Pooya Azadi on March 2, 2018 at the conference "Islamic Republic of Iran: Continuity or Change?" sponsored by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. More information: https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/ | 6/26/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Stanford Conference On Iran: US-Iran Relations In The Age Of Trump | Presentation by Dr. Colin H. Kahl on March 2, 2018 at the conference "Islamic Republic of Iran: Continuity or Change?" sponsored by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. More information: https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/ | 6/25/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Literary Modernity In Iran" by Iraj Parsinejad | Iraj Parsinejad studied Persian literature (BA, University of Tehran) and Linguistics (MA, Wolfson College, Oxford). He is the author of A History of Literary Criticism in Iran (IBEX, 2003). He will discuss the origins of literary modernity in Iran including the contributions of Ali Akhundzade, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, Mirza Malkom Khan, Abd al-Rahim Talebof, and Zayn al-‘Abedin Maraghe’i. | 6/14/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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I Am Taraneh: Discussion With Rasoul Sadrameli | A discussion with Rasoul Sadrameli, director of "I am Taraneh, 15," Abbas Milani, and Bahram Beyzaie, August 31, 2016. As part of the SGS Summer Film Festival, the Hamid & Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies screened the film "I am Taraneh, 15." Directed by Rasoul Sadrameli, the film is about 15 year old Taraneh (played by Taraneh Alidoosti), whose widowed father is in jail, is talked into an unhappy marriage and must deal with the consequences. Rasoul Sadrameli is a distinguished Iranian filmmaker. He made his first film, “Blood Raining,” in 1981. His first feature film, “Salvation,” was screened in 1983. Since then, he has directed, written, and produced dozens of films and documentaries. He was also the Managing Director of MILAD FILM, established in 1979 and the first company to distribute and produce Iranian films after the Revolution. And in 2005 he helped establish FILMIRAN, one of the largest Iranian film distribution companies. Some of his other award-winning films include: “Chrysanthemums” (1985), “The Girl in the Sneakers” (1999), “The Night” (2006), and “Every Night Loneliness” (2007). | 6/14/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Third Annual Bita Prize For Literature To Mr. Mohammad - Reza Shajarian | The Bita Daryabari Endowment in Persian Letters, with Stanford's Iranian Studies Program, presented the Third Annual Bita Prize for Literature on November 19th, 2010, to Mr. Mohammad-Reza Shajarian. For two generations of Iranians, their most personal moments of the sublime, and their most public expressions of social exuberance, their joys of love and their pains of separation have been inseparable from the tender and thunderous voice and music of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian. Whether reciting lines from a prayer or singing one of Khayam's Quatrains, reviving an old song or putting to music one of the masterpieces of modern Persian poetry, his vast musical erudition, his unfailing aesthetic taste and his perfectionisms combine to make it yet another part of his impressive collection of work. He has become in Iran an icon of classical Persian music. Today his reputation extends far beyond Iran's borders. Not only everywhere he goes, members of the Iranian Diaspora fill auditoriums and concert halls to see him perform, but he is considered one of the great fifty voices of our time. Shajarian is an artist of myriad talents. Born and raised in a religious family in the city of Meshed, early in life he realized not just his unique musical genius and the unusually wide yet supple and soft range of his voice, but his many other talents as well. He is a master calligrapher and carpenter, acclaimed song-writer and composer, and the best embodiment of an artist for whom art is not a commodity of commerce, but an existential expression of all that is good and evil in us. His remarkable command of Persian poetry—both classical and modern—has allowed him to turn the lyrics of his songs into the voice of the voiceless, and a map for the trials and tribulation of a nation pressured by discordant forces of despotism, democracy, dogmatism and freedom. For Iranian music, he has been a relentless guardian of tradition and a refreshing force for innovation and change. Whether it is in new musical instruments he has invented or innovative renditions of classical arrangements, he combines genius and talent with dedication, discipline and erudition, and the result has been a body of work singular in its depth, beauty, creativity, and finally unfailing dedication to justice and freedom. | 6/14/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Women Write Iran: Nostalgia And Human Rights From The Diaspora" by Nima Naghibi | Nima Naghibi is Chair and Associate Professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her research is in the areas of postcolonial and diaspora studies, and life narratives with particular attention to questions of human rights and social justice. She is the author of the books Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from the Diaspora (Minnesota Press, 2016) and Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran (Minnesota Press, 2007), and many essays and articles. | 6/14/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"From Isfahan To Irvine" by Hossein Omoumi | Hossein Omoumi is a scholar and musician from Isfahan, Iran. He currently teaches at UC Irvine. A new documentary about his life, made by Hesam Abedimi, and innovative teaching style will also be screened (in Farsi with English subtitles). After, Hossein will discuss and demonstrate the structure of classical Persian music by singing and playing the Ney, with vocals from Jessika Kenney, santur accompaniment from Faraz Minooie, and Sina Dehghani playing the tombak. | 6/11/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Eternal Magnetism Of The Dictator: A Psychological Analysis" by Fathali M. Moghaddam | History is a continuing struggle to escape dictatorship. Despite modest progress toward actualized democracy in some parts of the world, dictators once again loom large on the world stage. Globalization is associated with certain conditions that nurture increased expansion of dictatorial powers. This presentation explores the psychological foundations of this continued threat from dictators, and the steps needed to secure a more democratic future for the world. Fathali M. Moghaddam is Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science, Georgetown University. He is Editor-in-Chief of "Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology" (published by the American Psychological Association). His most recent books are The Psychology of Dictatorship (2013), The Psychology of Democracy (2016), Questioning Causality (2016, Rom Harre), and The Encyclopedia of Political Behavior (2017, 2.vols.). | 6/11/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"In Search Of Modern Iran" by Abbas Amanat | Abbas Amanat is Professor of History and International Studies and Director of the Yale Program in Iranian Studies. He discusses his new book Iran: A Modern History. | 6/11/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Maqams: The Roots Of Iranian Classical Music" by Kayhan Kalhor and Ali Akbar Moradi | Kayhan Kalhor and Ali Akbar Moradi in discussion Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed kamancheh (Persian spike fiddle) player. His musical collaborations have helped popularize Persian music outside of Iran and attract audiences from around the world. Kayhan is a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble (which received a Grammy in 2016 for the album “Sing Me Home”). He has composed music for Iran’s most renowned vocalists including Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri, and has toured as a soloist with ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and Orchestre National de Lyon. Ali Akbar Moradi is a master tambour (Persian lute) player. He has performed throughout Europe, Canada, and the U.S. and has performed with singers like Shahram Nazeri and at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Ali is from Kermanshah, Iran, and plays traditional Kurdish Iranian music. He currently lives in Iran and teaches tambour, and continues to develop the legacy of the instrument and the regional music. | 6/11/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Bahram Beyzaie Discusses "Crossroads" | Professor Bahram Beyzaie discusses his newest play "Crossroads" at Stanford University on April 23, 2018. Learn more about "Crossroads" here: https://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/events/bahram-beyzaie-discusses-crossroads-play | 6/11/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"An Alternative Approach to United States/Iran Relations" by Richard Falk | "An Alternative Approach to United States/Iran Relations" by Richard Falk by Stanford Iranian Studies Program | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Iran and the United States: Missed Opportunities for Reconciliation and Future Prospects | By Barbara Slavin | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Chaucer's Pious Queen and a Persian in a Pear Tree" by Franklin Lewis | "Chaucer's Pious Queen and a Persian in a Pear Tree" by Franklin Lewis by Stanford Iranian Studies Program | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"US-Iran Relations: A Hostage's view" by Kathryn Koob | "US-Iran Relations: A Hostage's view" by Kathryn Koob by Stanford Iranian Studies Program | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Novels and History: Diaspora Writing and Iranian History" by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani | "Novels and History: Diaspora Writing and Iranian History" by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani by Stanford Iranian Studies Program | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Ayatollah Khomeini's Theory of Government: Genesis and Evolution" by Dr. Arash Naraghi | Dr. Arash Naraghi got his doctorate degree in Pharmacology from Tehran University, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at University of California, Santa Barbara. He published a book on new understanding of Abrahamian religion and faith in 1999 (Tehran), and has published more than 30 papers on philosophical and theological issues in Iranian journals, mainly Kiyan magazine. Dr. Naraghi translated 3 books from English to Farsi: "Reason and religious belief", "Philosophical theology", and "An introduction to epistemology". He was a member of what is known as Kiyan Circle at this time. His research interests include philosophy of religion, theology, mysticism, and epistemology. | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Early German Poetry of Fereydoun Farrokhzad" by Nima Mina | Nima Mina is a member of academic staff at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies in the field of Persian and Comparative Literature. He received his academic training in general linguistics and Medieval Studies at the University of Marburg, Germany and in Comparative Literature and Music at the Universite de Montreal in Quebec. Recently, he has authored and edited books on the history of literary Orientalism in 19th and 20th century Germanic literatures (Iudicium-Verlag, Munich 2006) and Goethe's sources for the West-oestlicher Divan (Grazer Morgenlaendische Studien 2007. | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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An Evening with Dariush Mehrjui | Dariush Mehrjui, born 8 December 1939 in Tehran) is an Iranian director, screenwriter, producer, and film editor. As an Iranian New Wave cinema icon, Mehrjui is regarded to be one of the intellectual directors of Iranian cinema. Most of his films are inspired by literature and adopted based on Iranian and foreign novels and plays. A screening of his latest film, Santuri, followed by a conversation with Mehrjui. Closest parking is at the Oval. Look for Lasuen Mall (located to your left, if facing Memorial Church). | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Islamic Revolution of 1979: A Diplomat's View" by Jack Miklos | "The Islamic Revolution of 1979: A Diplomat's View" by Jack Miklos by Stanford Iranian Studies Program | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Asia Between Two Worlds" by Shahrnush Parsipur | Born and raised in Tehran, Shahrnush Parsipur received her B.A. in sociology from Tehran University in 1973 and studied Chinese language and civilization at the Sorbonne from 1976 to 1980. Her first book was Tupak-e Qermez (The Little Red Ball - 1969), a story for young people. Her first short stories were published in the late 1960s. One early story appeared in Jong-e Isfahan, no. 9 (June 1972), a special short-story issue which also featured stories by Esma'il Fasih, Houshang Golshiri, Taqi Modarresi, Bahram Sadeqi, and Gholam Hossein Saedi. Her novella Tajrobeh'ha-ye Azad (Trial Offers - 1970) was followed by the novel Sag va Zemestan-e Boland (The Dog and the Long Winter), published in 1976. In 1977, she published a volume of short stories called Avizeh'ha-ye Bolur (Crystal Pendant Earrings). Shahrnush Parsipur currently resides in the United States. She is the recipient of the first International Writers Project Fellowship from the Program in Creative Writing and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Breath Poetry" by Ziba Karbassi | One of the rising stars of Iranian poetry, Ziba Karbassi was born in 1974 in Tabriz, Iran. She left Iran in 1989 and now lives between London and Paris. She has published five volumes of poetry in Persian, all outside Iran, and continues to write prolifically. Her poetry tackles difficult themes with a mastery of craft and has received wide critical attention. Her work has been translated into several languages. An entire volume of her poetry is being translated into English by Stephen Watts. She was recently voted as Director of the Association of Iranian Writers in Exile. Ms. Karbassi tours on a regular basis to present her work and participate in various events. | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Messianic Pragmatists, The Riddle of Iran" by Roger Cohen | Roger Cohen joined The New York Times in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting Foreign Editor on September 11, 2001, and Foreign Editor six months later. Since 2004 he has written a column for the Times-owned International Herald Tribune, first for the news pages and then, since 2007, for the Op-Ed page. In 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times. Mr. Cohen has written "Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo" (Random House, 1998), an account of the wars of Yugoslavia's destruction, and "Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble" (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). He has also cowritten a biography of General Norman Schwarzkopf, "In the Eye of the Storm," (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1991). | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Ismailis of the Iranian World: History and Intellectual Contributions" by Farhad Daftary | Farhad Daftary has been affiliated since 1988 to The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, where he is currently Co-Director and Head of the Department of Academic Research and Publications. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in the US from 1958-71, receiving his doctorate in 1971 from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a consulting-editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica, co-editor of Encyclopaedia Islamica, as well as general editor of “Ismaili Heritage Series” and “Ismaili Texts and Translations Series”. An authority on Ismaili history, Dr. Daftary is the author of more than 100 articles and numerous books, including The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines (1990; 2nd ed., 2007), The Assassin Legends (1994), A Short History of the Ismailis (1998) and (with Z. Hirji) The Ismailis: An Illustrated History (2008). Dr. Daftary's books have been translated into Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and numerous European languages. Map: http://campus-map.stanford.edu/index.cfm?ID=01-200 Closest parking is at the Oval. Look for Lasuen Mall (located to your left, if facing Memorial Church). | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Odyssey of a Writer From Shiraz to Stanford" by Shahriyar Mandanipour | "The Odyssey of a Writer From Shiraz to Stanford" by Shahriyar Mandanipour by Stanford Iranian Studies Program | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Covering Tehran: A Journalist's Perspective" by Nazila Fathi | Nazila Fathi, New York Times reporter who was in Iran at the time of the June 2009 election. | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Social Contract in Iran" by Paul Rivlin | Paul Rivlin is an economist and senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. He studied at Cambridge, London and Harvard Universities and is the author of four books: The Dynamics of Economic Policy Making in Egypt; The Israeli Economy; Economic Policy and Performance in the Arab World, and Arab Economies in the Twenty First Century as well as monographs, papers, reports and contributions to books on economic development in the Middle East, international energy markets, defense and trade economics. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on Middle East economics at Tel Aviv, London and Ben Gurion Universities and has been a visiting professor at Emory University. Closest parking is at the Oval. Look for Lasuen Mall (located to your left, if facing Memorial Church). | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Persian in Pakistan: Many Dimensions of a Cultural Relationship" by Shahzad Bashir | Shahzad Bashir, Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University Shahzad Bashir specializes in Islamic Studies with primary interests in Sufism, Shi'ism, and the intellectual and social history of Persianate Islamic societies (Iran and Central and Southern Asia). He is the author of Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions: The Nurbakhshiya Between Medieval and Modern Islam, and Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis. He has recently finished a book project entitled Bodies of God's Friends: Sufis in Persianate Islamic Societies, and is currently working on a comparative study of Persian historical and hagiographic narratives from the late medieval to early modern period. | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Theocracy's Limits: Iran at the Precipice of its Contradictions | Roger Cohen joined The New York Times in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting Foreign Editor on September 11, 2001, and Foreign Editor six months later. Since 2004 he has written a column for the Times-owned International Herald Tribune, first for the news pages and then, since 2007, for the Op-Ed page. In 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times. Mr. Cohen has written "Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo" (Random House, 1998), an account of the wars of Yugoslavia's destruction, and "Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble" (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). He has also cowritten a biography of General Norman Schwarzkopf, "In the Eye of the Storm," (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1991). | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iran and Iraq: Cultural Ties or Political Rifts?" by Houchang Chehabi | "Iran and Iraq: Cultural Ties or Political Rifts?" by Houchang Chehabi by Stanford Iranian Studies Program | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Literary Trends in Contemporary Iran" by Ali Dehbashi | Ali Dehbashi has been the editor-in-chief of Bukhara since 1999, a periodical focusing on Iranian and world cultures and literatures. He has authored several books and edited over seventy volumes on Iranian history and literature. He has allocated special issues of Bukhara to world thinkers such as Rabindranath Tagore, Gunter Grass, Osip Mandelstam, Umberto Eco, Hannah Arendt, and Virginia Woolf. As the curator of Nights of Bukhara, a highly acclaimed lecture series in Tehran, Dehbashi has hosted Iranian and non-Iranian authors, scholars, artists, and public figures. As the Director of Shahab Publication, he has so far published forty-five books. Additionally, Ali Dehbashi was the editor-in-chief of the monthly KELK and Tavous Art Quarterly, and cooperated with numerous literary and art journals including Arash, Borj, Cheragh, Donya-ye Sokhan, Adineh, Daftar-e Honar, and Academy of Science Quarterly. | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Poetics of Passage: Bridging the Gap or Filling in the Precipice" by Reza Baraheni | Reza Baraheni, the author of more than sixty books of poetry, fiction, literary theory and criticism, currently teaches at the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.Winner of the prestigious Scholars-at-Risk-Program Award of the University of Toronto and Massey College, Baraheni has taught in the University of Tehran, Iran, University of Texas in Austin, Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the University of Toronto and York University. He has also been Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, Britain, Fellow of the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and Fellow of Winters College, York University. | 6/7/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Revisiting Ghosts of Revolution" by Shahla Talebi | Revisiting Ghosts of Revolution: Reading and a Reflection on Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran Shahla Talebi is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State University. A native of Iran, she lived through the 1979 Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War and left Iran in 1994 to the United States where she now resides. She received her undergraduate degree in social-cultural anthropology from University of California Berkeley and her masters and PhD, also in social cultural anthropology, from Columbia University. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Veil: Its History and Iconography in Ancient Iran and Islam" by Bijan Gheiby | Bijan Gheiby was born in 1954 in Tehran. He studied Filmmaking and Radio and Television Broadcasting in Tehran and Long Beach (Ca.) In Germany he studied Iranistik in the universities of Hamburg and Göttingen, where he received his Ph.D. in Iranian Studies and Communications. He has taught Zoroastrianism in the University of Hamburg and has been a participant in different international Conferences. His most recent publication is “Achievement of our Ancestors and Opinion of the Contemporaries” that deals with the literary monuments of ancient Iran and how modern scholarship tries to deny their existence. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Persian Poetry in Los Angeles: Nostalgia Versus Cultural Adoption" by Majid Naficy | Majid Naficy, the Arthur Rimbaud of Persian poetry, published his first poems in Jon-e Isfahan at age thirteen. Since then, he has put out more than 20 books of poems and essays in Persian. He fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife, Ezzat in Tehran. He lives in Los Angeles with his son, Azad, where the city of Venice has engraved a fragment of his poetry on a wall in Venice beach. Majid has published two collections of poetry, "Muddy Shoes" (Beyond Baroque Books 1999) and "Father and Son" (Red Hen Press, 2003) as well as his doctoral dissertation "Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature: A Return to Nature in the Poetry of Ninma Yushij" (University Press of America, 1997) in English." | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women and the Freedom Movement" by Farzaneh Milani | Born and raised in Teheran, Iran, Farzaneh Milani attended French primary and secondary schools. She earned her BA in French Literature in 1970 from California State University at Hayward. Transferring to the University of California in Los Angeles, she completed her graduate studies in Comparative Literature in 1979. Her dissertation, Forugh Farrokhzad: A Feminist Perspective, was a critical study of the poetry of a pioneering Iranian woman poet. Milani taught Persian Language and Literature at UCLA for four years before coming to the University of Virginia in 1986. Past president of the Association of Middle Eastern Women Studies in America, Milani was the recipient of Alumni Teaching Award in 1998. She is the author of Words, Not Swords: Iranian women writers and the Freedom of Movement, Veils and Words: The Emerging Voice of Iranian Women Writers, and A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems of Simin Behbahani (edited and translated with Kaveh Safa). She has served as the guest editor of Nimeye Digar, IranNameh, and Journal of Iranian Studies. Milani has written some 100 articles, book chapters, introductions, and afterwards in Persian and English and lectured at over 150 colleges and universities nationally and internationally. Her poems have been published in Nimeye Digar, Par, Barrayand, Daneshju, Omid, and Avaye Portland. Milani teaches courses in Persian literature and cinema, Women and Islam, and cross-cultural studies of women. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Ahmad Fardid: A "Westtoxicated" Persian?" by Ali Mirsepassi | "Ahmad Fardid: A "Westtoxicated" Persian?" by Ali Mirsepassi by Stanford Iranian Studies Program | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Love, Rights, and Honor: Gender and Democracy in Iran" by Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini | Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iranian politics has conventionally been viewed as a polarized conflict between “secular” and “Islamic” ideologies. I argue that this view has masked the real battle, which has been between despotism and patriarchy, on the one hand, and democracy and feminism, on the other. The century-old struggle for democracy in Iran has been enmeshed in the dynamics of changing relations between sexuality, theology and politics. In this light I re-examine the course of the 2009 presidential elections and their aftermath. Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini is a legal anthropologist, specializing in Islamic law, gender and development. She has a BA in Sociology from Tehran University (1974) and a PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Cambridge (1980). A Professorial Research Associate at the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, University of London, she has held numerous research fellowships and visiting professorships, including Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2004-5), and Hauser Global Law Visiting Professor at New York University (2002-8). She is a founding member of the Musawah Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family. Her publications include "Marriage on Trial: A study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco" (I.B. Tauris, 1993, 2002), "Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran" (Princeton University Press, 1999), "Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform" (with Richard Tapper; I.B. Tauris, 2006), and "Control and Sexuality: the Revival of Zina Laws in Muslim Contexts" (with Vanja Hamzic; Women Living Under Muslim Laws, 2010). She has also directed (with Kim Longinotto) two award-winning feature-length documentary films on contemporary issues in Iran: "Divorce Iranian Style" (1998) and "Runaway" (2001). | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Everyday Crime in the Sacred Shrine City of Mashhad, 1913-14" by Farzin Vejdani | Farzin Vejdani is an Assistant Professor of modern Iranian history at the University of Arizona. He received his PhD in history from Yale University (2009). His research interests broadly cover late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Iranian intellectual and cultural history, including Ottoman-Iranian cultural relations, Persian language policy, and Iranian nationalist historiography. He is currently preparing a manuscript entitled "Purveyors of the Past: Education, Publics and the Writing of History in Iran, 1860-1940." His recent publications include "Crafting Constitutional Narratives: Iranian and Young Turk Solidarity 1907-1909" (2010) and “Appropriating the Masses: Folklore Studies, Ethnography, and Interwar Iranian Nationalism” (2012). | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iranian Theater in Diaspora: A Playwright's Retrospective" by Mohsen Yalfani | Born and educated in Iran, Mohsen Yalfani is one of the most respected playwrights of Iran. He first established his reputation in the years before the revolution when his plays where known for their unflinching approach to social problems of the time. He spent several years in prison during the Shah's regime and in the early months and years of the 1979 revolution, he was one of the leaders of Iran's Writers Association. Forced into exile, he has continued writing plays. He lives and works in Paris and has been one of the leading voices of the Iranian Writers Association in Exile. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iran's Wilsonian Moment? Iranian Responses to WWI" by Oliver Bast | Oliver Bast, Dr. phil., Maître-ès-Lettres, is Senior Lecturer [Associate Professor] in Middle Eastern History and Persian at the University of Manchester where he served as head of the department of Middle Eastern Studies between 2008 and 2011. He read History and Persian Studies in Berlin (Humboldt-Universität), in Tehran (University of Tehran), in Paris (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3) and in Bamberg (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg). Bast holds a joint doctorate (thèse en co-tutelle) from the Sorbonne and Bamberg. During the Academic Year 2011-2012 he was Visiting Fellow in Iranian Studies at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Bast’s research interests include the diplomatic and political history of Modern Iran as well as the interface between historiography, politics and cultural memory in contemporary Iran. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Graphic Novels and Iranian Art: The Case of Zahra's Paradise" by Amir Soltani | Amir Soltani is a graphic novelist, documentary filmmaker and human rights activist. He is the co-creator of "Zahra's Paradise", a NYT bestselling graphic novel published as an interactive real-time webcomic (please see http://www.zahrasparadise.com/). "Zahra's Paradise" is fiction based on the true story of an Iranian woman, whose son vanishes after the 2009 protests against Iran's fraudulent elections. "Zahra's Paradise" was nominated for an Eisner Award and has been translated into 16 languages. Amir has worked in business, media, nonprofits and philanthropy. He is the executive producer and co-director of Redemption, a documentary film about recyclers in West Oakland. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Muhammad Mossadegh: Patriot of Persia" by Christopher de Bellaigue | Christopher de Bellaigue was born in London in 1971 and was raised in the United Kingdom. In 1995 he graduated in Indian and Persian Studies from Cambridge University and started working as a journalist in India. Since then, he has written from the Middle East, Turkey and South Asia for, among others, the Economist, the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Harpers and the Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs (HarperCollins, 2005), The Struggle for Iran (New York Review Books, 2007), Rebel Land (Penguin Press, 2010) and Patriot of Persia (HarperCollins, 2012). De Bellaigue was the 2007-8 Alistair Horne Fellow at St Anthony's College, Oxford. He is currently preparing a BBC radio series and a book about modernizing societies in the Middle East. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Shah Isma'il in late Safavid Historiography: a Unique Treatise on Safavid Kingship" by Sholeh Quinn | Sholeh Quinn is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced. She received her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 1993. Her main area of research focuses on the history of Iran during the Safavid era (ca. 16th-early 18th centuries), with a special emphasis on historiography. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iranian Theater in Exile, A Personal Odyssey" by Niloofar Beyzaie | Niloofar Beyzaie is the daughter of the theater and film director Bahram Beyzaie and Monir Azam Raminfar. Leaving Iran in 1985 for political reasons, she studied German literature, theater, film and television studies, and education at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. In 1994 she founded the theater group "Daritsche", serving as director, playwright, and lighting and costume designer. Central themes of Niloofar Beyzaie’s theatrical works are women, "the suffering of individuals among the crowd", and "being a stranger either one’s own, or a foreign, society". She has written extensively on Iran’s political and social situation, particularly the plight of contemporary women. In 2005, she was recognized for her work as an exemplary theatrical director, and awarded the Persian "World Academy of Art, Literature and Media" in Budapest. In the same year, her play "Daughters of the Sun (Come, Dance with me)" was performed in Zurich by Maralam Theater, under direction of Peter Braschler. The revival of her play "No Man's Land" was performed in German in March 2009 in Karlsruhe, as part of the Cultural Perspectives of Women festival. Her latest play, "Face to Face at the Threshold of the Cold Season", centered on the Iranian historical figures Tahirih Qurratu'l-ayn and Forough Farokhzad, premiered in October 2011. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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To Write a Country: Home, Family, and the Art of Remembrance in the Iranian Diaspora | Jasmin Darznik, Washington University & Lee University Jasmin Darznik is the author of The Good Daughter: A Memoir of MyMother’s Life. A New York Times bestseller, the book has beentranslated into eight languages and was shortlisted for the 2012Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her writing has appeared inthe New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Dr.Darznik was born in Tehran, Iran and received her PhD from PrincetonUniversity. She has received grants, fellowships, and honors from theVirginia Foundation for the Humanities, Steinbeck Fellows Program,Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Corporation of Yaddo. She iscurrently a professor of English and creative writing at Washingtonand Lee University and the recipient of a 2013 Outstanding FacultyAward from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Glories of Ancient Iran: Its Use and Abuse in the 19th and 20th Century" by Touraj Daryaee | Touraj Daryaee is the Howard C. Baskerville Professor in the Historyof Iran and the Persianate World and the Associate Director of the SamuelJordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California, Irvine. His recent book is the Oxford History of Iran, Oxford. His last work was abook co-athored with Iraj Afshar called: Scholars and Humanists: The Letters of S.H. Taqizadeh and W.B. Henning (1933-1966). | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"My Promised Land" by Sahar Delijani | Sahar Delijani was born in Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran in 1983, the same year both her parents were arrested due to their political activism against the Islamic regime. In 1996, when she was 12 years old, her parents decided to move to Northern California to join her mother’s family. Delijani was registered in a middle school, starting from 7th grade. Her works have appeared in a wide range of literary publications and journals including The Battered Suitcase, Tryst, Slice Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Perigee, Border Hopping, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Sangam Review.Delijani was nominated for the 2010 and 2011 Pushcart Prize and was for a time a regular contributor to Iran-Emrooz (Iran of Today) Political and Cultural Journal. Children of the Jacaranda Tree is her first novel, published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in June 2013, and it is being translated into 27 languages. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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A Flawed Chapter in Modern Iranian Historiography: The First Century of Iran and Islam | Zakeri finished his Ph.D. studies in Near Eastern History at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City in 1987. The title of his Dissertation was Sasanian Soldiers in Early Muslim Society: the Origins of the 'Ayyaran and Futuwwa (an expanded revised version of this was published, Wiesbaden 1995). He taught medieval and Islamic history courses at the University of Utah (1984-1987). Working as a Research Fellow at the University of Frankfurt, he prepared the results of a research project published as Persian Wisdom in Arabic Garb: 'Ali b. 'Ubayda al-Rayhani (d. 219/834) and his Jawahir al-kilam wa-fara'id al-hikam. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2007 [Awarded the International Book Prize of Iran for the year 2009]. From 01.02.2011 till 01.02.2113 he worked at the department of Arabistik/ Islamwissenschaft at the University of Göttingen (where he is now) on the depictions of a wise king in the early Arabic and Persian Mirrors for Princes (Nasihat al-muluks; Siyasatnamas), the results of which are being prepared for publication. Currently he is also finishing a monograph on the life and work of Muhammad b. Khalaf b. al-Marzban (d. 309/921), who was a prolific author and had translated more than fifty ‘books’ from Middle Persian into Arabic. Zakeri has published articles on the Islamic history and Persian/Arabic literatures in the early Islamic period. His main research interest is focused on translations from Middle Persian into Arabic. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Days of Revolution: Political Culture and Process in an Iranian Village" by Mary Hegland | MARY HEGLAND Mary Elaine Hegland is professor of anthropology at Santa Clara University. Her areas of focus include women and gender, political anthropology, Shia Islamic ritual and politics, resistance and revolution, social and cultural change, and the anthropology of personal philosophies and life histories. Hegland has conducted anthropological fieldwork in Iran, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Afghanistan, and among Iranians and Pakistanis in the Santa Clara Valley. Her most recent publication is DAYS OF REVOLUTION: POLITICAL UNREST IN AN IRANIAN VILLAGE, Stanford University Press, 2014. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Psychology of Dictatorship" by Fathali Moghaddam | The Psychology of Dictatorship Fathali Moghaddam is Professor, Department of Psychology, and Director of The Conflict Resolution Program, Department of Government, Georgetown University. He is the Editor of ‘Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology’ (American Psychological Association). He was educated from an early age in England, and worked for the United Nations and McGill University before joining Georgetown. He returned to Iran in 1979 and was researching there during the hostage taking crisis and the early years of the Iran- Iraq war. His most recent books include ‘The Psychology of Dictatorship’ (2013), ‘Psychology for the Third Millenium (2012, with Rom Harre), and ‘The New Global Insecurity’ (2010). | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Bita Prize for Young Persian Artists: Dena Taherianfar - Part 2 | For the past seven years, we have been giving an annual award, named the Bita Prize for Persian Letters. The winners have been some of the most prominent Iranian writers, poets, vocalists, and playwrights of our time—from Simin Behbahani and Mohammad Reza Shajarian (the first the poet laureate of the people and the second the country's most beloved vocalist), to Bahram Beyzaie (the eminent film-maker and playwright) and Mahshid Amirshahy (the acclaimed writer and translator). Beginning this year, with the generous support of Ms Bita Daryabari, we are launching a second award, this time dedicated to young artists. If the Bita award recognizes and celebrates a lifetime of artistic achievements, the Bita Prize for Young Persian Artists hopes to identify and help the careers of young talents. It is our belief and hope that receiving an award at Stanford will help these young artists on their quest for excellence. We are also proud to announce that this year's award ceremonies will be held at the new Bing Concert Hall at Stanford--one of the best performance halls in the entire worldtoday. For a virtual tour of the Bing Concert Hall, please click on the following link: http://live.stanford.edu/media/videos/bing-concert-hall-fly-through The first winner of the Bita Prize for Young Persian Artists will be Ms Dena Taherianfar. Dena Taherianfar was born in Tehran, in November of 1996. She began taking lessons in piano when she was six. Her first teacher was Mrs. Shohreh J. Ghajar. Dena gave her debut concert in the renowned Roudaki Concert Hall of Tehran in 2008. At her teacher’s suggestion, Dena eventually moved to Vienna where she began to study piano with Prof. Stanislaw Tichonow at the Joseph Haydn Conservatory. She has won numerous national and international prizes. She performed at the Gala Concert in the House of “Music House” in Vienna, and won two first prizes in the Austrian Youth Competitions “Prima La Musica.” She has also won first prizes in the International Competition “Concours Flame 2011” in Paris, “Valsesia Musica 2012” in Italy, and the “21st Century Art 2013” in Vienna. For additional information about the artist, please visit her website: http://denataherianfar.wix.com/dena | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Bita Prize for Young Persian Artists: Dena Taherianfar - Part 1 | DENA TAHERIANFAR For the past seven years, we have been giving an annual award, named the Bita Prize for Persian Letters. The winners have been some of the most prominent Iranian writers, poets, vocalists, and playwrights of our time—from Simin Behbahani and Mohammad Reza Shajarian (the first the poet laureate of the people and the second the country's most beloved vocalist), to Bahram Beyzaie (the eminent film-maker and playwright) and Mahshid Amirshahy (the acclaimed writer and translator). Beginning this year, with the generous support of Ms Bita Daryabari, we are launching a second award, this time dedicated to young artists. If the Bita award recognizes and celebrates a lifetime of artistic achievements, the Bita Prize for Young Persian Artists hopes to identify and help the careers of young talents. It is our belief and hope that receiving an award at Stanford will help these young artists on their quest for excellence. We are also proud to announce that this year's award ceremonies will be held at the new Bing Concert Hall at Stanford--one of the best performance halls in the entire worldtoday. For a virtual tour of the Bing Concert Hall, please click on the following link: http://live.stanford.edu/media/videos/bing-concert-hall-fly-through The first winner of the Bita Prize for Young Persian Artists will be Ms Dena Taherianfar. Dena Taherianfar was born in Tehran, in November of 1996. She began taking lessons in piano when she was six. Her first teacher was Mrs. Shohreh J. Ghajar. Dena gave her debut concert in the renowned Roudaki Concert Hall of Tehran in 2008. At her teacher’s suggestion, Dena eventually moved to Vienna where she began to study piano with Prof. Stanislaw Tichonow at the Joseph Haydn Conservatory. For a virtual tour of the Bing Concert Hall, please click on the following link: http://live.stanford.edu/media/videos/bing-concert-hall-fly-through The first winner of the Bita Prize for Young Persian Artists will be Ms Dena Taherianfar. Dena Taherianfar was born in Tehran, in November of 1996. She began taking lessons in piano when she was six. Her first teacher was Mrs. Shohreh J. Ghajar. Dena gave her debut concert in the renowned Roudaki Concert Hall of Tehran in 2008. At her teacher’s suggestion, Dena eventually moved to Vienna where she began to study piano with Prof. Stanislaw Tichonow at the Joseph Haydn Conservatory. She has won numerous national and international prizes. She performed at the Gala Concert in the House of “Music House” in Vienna, and won two first prizes in the Austrian Youth Competitions “Prima La Musica.” She has also won first prizes in the International Competition “Concours Flame 2011” in Paris, “Valsesia Musica 2012” in Italy, and the “21st Century Art 2013” in Vienna. For additional information about the artist, please visit her website: http://denataherianfar.wix.com/dena | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Culture Wars and Dual Society in Iran" by Houchang Chehabi | Houchang Esfandiar Chehabi is a Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. He has also taught at Harvard University, UCLA, and the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of Iranian Politics and Religions Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini (1990); principal author of Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the last 500 years (2006); co-editor, with Juan J. Linz, of Sultanistic Regimes (1998); co-editor, with Vanessa Martin, of Iran's Constitutional Revolution (2010); and co-editor, with Farhad Khosrokhavar and Clément Therme, of Iran and the Challenges of the 21st Century (2013) focuses on cultural history. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Shahnama Illustrated Manuscripts in the Digital Age & The Idea of the Shahnama in Contemporary Arts | Charles Melville is Professor of Persian History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He has a BA (Hons.) in Arabic and Persian from Cambridge (1972), an MA in Islamic History (SOAS, 1973) and a PhD on the Historical seismicity of Iran (Cambridge, 1978). His main research interests are in the history and historiography of Iran in the Mongol to Safavid periods (14th-17thcenturies), and the illustration of Persian manuscripts. Recent publications include: “The illustration of history in Safavid manuscript painting”, in Colin P. Mitchell (ed.) New Perspectives on Safavid Iran: Empire and Society, London 2011; “The itineraries of Shahrukh b. Timur (1405-47)”, in D. Durand-Guédy (ed.) Turko-Mongol Rulers, Cities and City Life, Leiden, 2013, and “The Royal image in Mongol Iran”, in Lynette Mitchell & Charles Melville (eds), Every Inch a King: Comparative studies on kings and kingship in the ancient and medieval worlds, Leiden, 2013. He is currently working on the illustration of mediaeval Persian history. Dr Firuza Melville is a graduate (BA, MA hons.) of the Iranian Philology Department, Faculty of Oriental Studies, St Petersburg University, where she received her PhD in Iranian philology, Art and Islamic Studies in 1989. She was an Associate Professor at the University of St Petersburg when she joined the Cambridge Shahnama Project after a term at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) and a term at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) as a Fulbright Professor. From September 2005 until September 2010 she was Lecturer in Persian Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Keeper of the Firdousi Library of Wadham College. From October 2010 she was the Iran Heritage Foundation Research Associate of the Cambridge Shahnama Project. Since September 2013 she is the Head of the Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies, University of Cambridge. Her main research interests include Classical Persian literature, Medieval and contemporary Persian art, Persian codicology, Travelogue literature of the Qajar period, Persian literary classics in contemporary art and Russian cultural Orientalism in Iran, Central Asia and the Caucasus. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"This Was a Town of Kindness Once: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz" by Dick Davis | Dick Davis is Professor Emeritus of Persian at Ohio State University, where he was chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from 2002 to 2012. He has written scholarly works on both English and Persian literature, as well as eight volumes of his own poetry. He has been the recipient of numerous academic and literary awards, including the Ingram Merrill and Heinemann awards for poetry, and a Guggenheim Fellowship; his publications include volumes of poetry and verse translation chosen as books of the year by The Sunday Times (UK) 1989; The Daily Telegraph (UK) 1989; The Economist (UK) 2002; The Times Literary Supplement (UK) 2013, and The Washington Post 2010. He has published numerous book-length verse translations from medieval Persian, most recently, Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (2012). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has been called, by the Times Literary Supplement, “our finest translator from Persian”. | 5/31/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Theatre in Prison" by Nasser Rahmaninejad | A brief historical overview of theatrical performances in prison, particularly in Iran. The presentation is based on an essay. You can contact the Iranian Studies Program for a copy of the essay after the event has occurred. Nasser Rahmaninejad, a foremost, celebrated Iranian artist started his career in theatre in 1959 Iran. In response to the authoritarian cultural policies and harsh censorship of the Shah’s regime, he founded his alternative, independent theatre group, Mehr in 1966. His group, which later changed its name to Iran Theatre Association, became very influential in the field, competing with other well-financed, state-sponsored theatre groups until it was closed down by the SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police in 1974. All members of the group were arrested and Rahmaninejad was sentenced to twelve years in prison to be freed by the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah’s regime. After the revolution Rahmaninejad resumed his artistic activities, staging several plays while teaching in the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, and writing articles and lecturing on theatre and politics for a range of audiences. Following the Islamic regime’s crack down on the opposition Rahmaninejad was forced into exile. However he continued his artistic activities writing essays, translating into Persian articles on theatre and politics, giving invited lectures in variety of academic and artistic organizations in Europe and the United States, such as the International Writing Program (University of Iowa), and the Center for Iranian Research and Analysis (CIRA). His plays, in exile include My Heart, My Homeland, produced by the Society for Creativity and sponsored by the Lilly Foundation, Office of Student Life, Liberal Education Department and Hokin Center and performed by Department of Theatre of the Columbia College of Chicago (1995); One Page of Exile, in the first festival of New Windows on Old Pasadena (1996). Rahmaninejad lives in Berkeley, California. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Diaspora Media: Failures, Accomplishments and Future Role" by Masoud Behnoud | Massoud Behnoud, a prominent Iranian journalist and writer, was born on 27 July 1947 in Tehran. He started his work as a journalist in 1964. During his long career he worked as an investigating journalist for different publications and founded more than 20 newspapers and magazines, none of which are currently in publication. Between 1971-79 he was the chief editor of the most influential and popular daily in Iran, "Ayandegan", that was shut down in 1979 on the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini and it's editor and senior staff were all imprisoned. During 1972-79 he also worked as a producer, writer and speaker for the "National Iranian Radio and Television". In 1979 Massoud Behnoud became the chief editor of the weekly "Tehran-e Mosavar", which was also shut down by the Islamic government after 30 issues during the crackdown of all non-governmental and independent newspapers. Between 1972-1979 Massoud Behnoud was one of the most important and active figures of the trade union of Iranian journalists. From 1979 till 1985, after the closure of "Tehran-e Mosavar" as well as the trade union of Iranian journalists Massoud Behnoud. From 1981-1985 he led a low profile existence in Teheran. In 1985 he was one of the founders of "Adineh", the most prominent and influential social and literary monthly in Iran. For more than 13 years Massoud Behnoud was one of the leading members of the editorial board and published a great number of essays and commentaries in "Adineh". In his articles he supported the freedom of speech and of the press. He struggled against censorship and tried to support the free circulation of information. Once in 1995 the trade union of Armenian writers invited 22 Iranian writers and journalist for a visit to Armenia. Massoud Behnoud was one of these delegates. In a conspiracy to kill all of the delegates the Iranian security police tried to divert the bus they were traveling with on a steep valley. In 1997 Massoud Behnoud joined a host of other journalists to publish the Teheran daily "Jameh" His articles and commentaries were received with a great deal of public interest. With the closure of "Jameh" he continued his work in the other newly found dailies "Tous", "Neshat", "Asr-e Azadegan" and the most lately "Bonyan". All of this newspapers have been closed down. Following a series of murders in 1999 during which some prominent Iranian writers and intellectuals have been killed by the security police, Massoud Behnoud´s name was also discovered on the list of those writers and intellectuals who had been earmarked for assassination. After the crackdown of the Iranian newspapers, Massoud Behnoud together with other well known journalists like Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, Akbar Ganji, Emadeddin Baqi and Ebrahim Nabavi , was imprisoned for a period of 23 months. The court accused him of "having provoked public opinion and" insulting the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic and the commander of the Revolutionary guards". The sentence against him and other journalists aroused a lot of protest from Reporters sans Frontieres, the International PEN-Center, amnesty international and other human rights organizations. After serving a a period of 6 months, two of which he spent in solitary confinement, Massoud Behnoud was released temporarily on bail. While Massoud Behnoud was engaged in a European lecture tour, on 1 June 2002, the Iranian juridical authorities announced that an order for his arrest had once again been issued. On the baisi of this order he was ordered to return back to Iran to serve the remainder of his 16 months prison term. Masoud Behnoud currently lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and has a Daughter and a son. He is working as a journalist for a number of media organizations, mainly BBC Persian Services, for which he has worked for the past 21 years. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Discovering Cyrus and the Idea of Iran: From the Cartoons of The 300 to the Craft of History | Reza Zarghamee brings multiple perspectives and deep knowledge to his account of the life of Cyrus the Great. Born in London in 1978 to Iranian parents, Zarghamee grew up in Boston. His immersion in the ancient history of Iran started early: At the age of thirteen, he began studying Old Persian cuneiform at the urging of Professor Richard Frye, a founder of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Later, he took courses in Zoroastrianism and Manichaenism taught by another eminent Harvard scholar, Prods Oktor Skjaervø. He attended Columbia University, pursuing a double-major in history and biology, studying Persian language and literature, and graduating with honors in 2000. Three years later, he received a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School, where his writings included a comparison of ancient Near Eastern legal systems. Since then, he has practiced law at the firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP while continuing his scholarly investigations of the era of Cyrus. His extensive travels in the Middle East have taken him across much of the empire founded by that giant of history twenty-six centuries ago. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, where he is currently at work on a life of Darius, the second book in Iran’s Age of Empire. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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In Search of the Lost Laleh-Zar, a lecture by Nasser Rahmaninejad; a film screening of "Siah Bazi" | A lecture followed by the screening of Maryam Khakipour's film, "Siah Bâzi." Guests: Nasser Rahmaninejad and Maryam Khakipour Nasser Rahmaninejad, a foremost, celebrated Iranian artist started his career in theatre in 1959 Iran. In response to the authoritarian cultural policies and harsh censorship of the Shah’s regime, he founded his alternative, independent theatre group, Mehr in 1966. His group, which later changed its name to Iran Theatre Association, became very influential in the field, competing with other well-financed, state-sponsored theatre groups until it was closed down by the SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police in 1974. All members of the group were arrested and Rahmaninejad was sentenced to twelve years in prison to be freed by the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah’s regime. After the revolution Rahmaninejad resumed his artistic activities, staging several plays while teaching in the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, and writing articles and lecturing on theatre and politics for a range of audiences. Following the Islamic regime’s crack down on the opposition Rahmaninejad was forced into exile. However he continued his artistic activities writing essays, translating into Persian articles on theatre and politics, giving invited lectures in variety of academic and artistic organizations in Europe and the United States, such as the International Writing Program (University of Iowa), and the Center for Iranian Research and Analysis (CIRA). His plays, in exile include My Heart, My Homeland, produced by the Society for Creativity and sponsored by the Lilly Foundation, Office of Student Life, Liberal Education Department and Hokin Center and performed by Department of Theatre of the Columbia College of Chicago (1995); One Page of Exile, in the first festival of New Windows on Old Pasadena (1996). Rahmaninejad lives in Berkeley, California. Maryam Khakipour was born in Tehran, Iran. She studied drama in the Fine Arts Faculty at the University of Tehran and started acting at the City Theatre in Tehran. In 1982, she moved to France, where she attended the French Drama Conservatory in Paris and continued theater as a teacher. She directed two documentary films, both awarded in several festivals: Siah Bâzi, the Joy Makers (selected in Tribeca Festival, NY) and Shadi. In 2013, she made two radio documentaries for the France Culture radio station called «Your death we take care of». This year she directed a 30 minutes long feature film: A True Job, and is currently shooting with the writer Jean-Daniel Magnin a random webdoc about adolescent immigrants who learn French in special classes: Why Am I Me and Not You. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Mithraic Societies: From Brotherhood to Religion's Adversary" by Abolala Soudavar | Abolala Soudavar completed his university education at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris (1963-67), Stanford University (1967-68) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Pratiques, Paris (1980-81). As a businessman he was involved in Iran from 1969 to 1982, when he moved to the USA and established Mirak Inc. He was Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Tehran University from 1970 to 1977. He is/was a member of the Visiting Committee for Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York (since 1983), of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1978 to 1994), Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago - Visiting Committee - (1995-7), Arthur M Sackler Gallery- Visiting Committee, Smithsonian Institution (1995-2003), Harvard University Museums-Collection Committee (1997- present). His publications include Art of the Persian Courts (1992), The Aura of Kings: Legitimacy and Devine Sanction in Iranian Kingship (2003),Decoding Old Masters: Patrons, Painters, and Enigmatic Paintings of the 15th Century (2008), Mithraic Societies: From Brotherhood to Religion’s Adversary” (2014). | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Evolution of Iranian Rhythms" by Mohsen Namjoo | Mohsen Namjoo is an Iranian artist, songwriter, singer, music scholar and setar (traditional Persian lute) player based in California. Born in 1976 in Torbat-e Jam, Iran, Namjoo began his musical training at the age of twelve, studying under Nasrollah Nasehpoor until the age of eighteen. In 1994 Namjoo began to study Theater and Music at the University of Tehran, where he was trained under Alireza Mashayekhi, Azin Movahed and other masters. Namjoo also studied Iranian folk music under Haj Ghorbane Soleimani. His unique music style resembles a patchwork of Persian classical poetry of Hafez, Rumi or Saadi with western music, namely rock, blues, and jazz. Since 2003, Namjoo has recorded parts of his works in Tehran. His debut album titled Toranj was officially released in Iran in September 2007 with his own voice featured in most of his creations. He has also composed soundtracks for movies and plays, and was featured in the documentary Sounds of Silence (directed by Amir Hamz and Mark Lazarz) which has been screened at international film festivals. He also appeared in a feature narrative film called Few Kilograms of Dates for the Funeral (Director Saman Salur). Namjoo’s first performance outside of Iran was in January 2006 at the Tehran Hotspot of the International Rotterdam Film Festival where he played solo. In 2009 he was sentenced in absentia to a five-year jail term by the Iranian revolutionary courts for allegedly ridiculing the ash-Shams, a sura of Qur’an in the song named “Shams”. The conviction took place in spite of his formal apology. After establishing in the West, he sang this song in his Oy album which was produced in Italy in 2009. In 2008 Namjoo kicked off his first solo US tour, which granted him the Visiting Artist Fellowship at Stanford University, co-sponsored by the Christina & Hamid Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the Music Department at Stanford. In 2010, Namjoo partnered with Payam Entertainment to present Namjoo in A Minor with a new ensemble centered around some of his most popular and controversial songs. They performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Sony Center in Toronto, Canada and the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. Payam Entertainment released Namjoo’s latest album Useless Kisses in 2011, and Alaki in 2012, which live recording from a performance at the Stanford University in February 2011. In the fall of 2011, Namjoo joined the team of celebrated New Yorke based Iranian artist Shirin Neshat as the music director of her performance OverRuled, commissioned by the Performa 2011 Festival in New York City. He is currently working with the Iranian filmmaker, scholar and play write, Bahram Beyzai on his new project commissioned by Stanford University. Namjoo continues touring the world and creating new music. His new album entitled “Thirteen/Eight” is due in the fall of 2012. Hailed as “the Bob Dylan of Iran” by the New York Times, Mohsen Namjoo is a visionary artist who speaks for and touches the souls of today’s youth. Seamlessly blending the Classical with the Modern, the ancient with the current, Mohsen Namjoo is a true musical maverick. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Sky Blue Stone: The Turquoise Trade and Eurasian Empires" by Arash Khazeni | Arash Khazeni earned a Ph.D. in history from Yale University and teaches Middle Eastern and Eurasian history at Pomona College. His research is focused on the imperial and environmental histories of the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. His publications include Sky Blue Stone: The Turquoise Trade in World History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), recipient of the Middle East Studies Association Houshang Pourshariati Book Award, and “Across the Black Sands and the Red: Travel Writing, Nature, and the Reclamation of the Eurasian Steppe, circa 1850,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (2010). He is currently working on a history of inter-Asian encounters in colonial Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Burma. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Recent Trends in Iranian Fiction Writing" by Aida Moradi Ahani | Aida Moradi Ahani was born in Bandaranzali, Iran, in 1983. She now lives and works in Tehran. She graduated in electrical engineering from Azad University (Tehran, Iran- 2007). Since 2005 she has been active as an essayist, editor and writer. Her first collection of short stories, The Pin on Cat's Tail, was published in 2011 (Cheshmeh publishers, Tehran). Her début novel, Golfing on the Gunpowder was published in 2013 (Negah, Tehran). She has collaborated with another artist to turn one of her short stories into a film script. Another of her stories has been selected and translated into English for Tehran Noir, a collection of Iranian short stories to be published this fall by Akashic Books, New York. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Tehran At Twilight/Tehran Noir" by Salar Abdoh | Salar Abdoh was born in Iran, and splits his time between Tehran and New York City, where he codirects the Creative Writing MFA Program at the City College of New York. He is the author of The Poet Game and Opium. His essays and short stories have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, BOMB, Callaloo, Guernica, and on the BBC. He is the recipient of the NYFA Prize and the National Endowment for the Arts award. He is the editor of Tehran Noir and the author of Tehran at Twilight, his latest novel. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Isolation and Proliferation: Israel, America, and the South African Nuclear Weapons Program | Sasha Polakow-Suransky is an Editor for International Opinion at the New York Times Op-Ed page, based at the International New York Times office in London. He is responsible for assigning pieces on foreign policy, national security and international affairs. Before moving to the New York Times in early 2011, he was a senior editor at Foreign Affairs from 2007 - 2011. Mr. Polakow-Suransky’s articles have appeared in The American Prospect, The Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Haaretz, The New Republic, and South Africa’s Weekly Mail & Guardian. His book, "The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa" (Pantheon, 2010) focused on the clandestine military and nuclear cooperation between the Israeli government and the South African apartheid regime during the 1970s and 1980s. Mr. Polakow-Suranksy holds a bachelor’s degree in history and urban studies from Brown University and an D.Phil in modern history from Oxford University (St. Antony’s College), where he was a Rhodes Scholar from 2003–2006. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"A Conversation With Bahiyyih Nakhjavani: Author of 'The Woman Who Read Too Much'" by B. Nakhjavani | Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, author of The Woman Who Read Too Much. "A gripping tale of a pioneering woman in nineteenth century Iran, told from the street level up, that is universally relevant to our times." Bahiyyih Nakhjavani grew up in Uganda, was educated in the United Kingdom and the United States, and now lives in France where she teaches. She is the author of The Saddlebag and Paper as well as non-fiction works about fundamentalism and education. Her novels have been published in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Russian, and Korean. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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Modernity, the Baha'i Faith and the Question of Modern Education in Late Qajar and Early Iran | Soli Shahvar was born in Iran and received his MA in Middle Eastern and African History and his BA in Political Science from Tel Aviv University. He then went on to receive his doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He is a current Director at the Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Haifa. He has published many works, including his book ‘The Forgotten Schools’: The Baha’is and Modern Education in Iran, 1899-1934. The wide range of Dr. Shahvar’s publications, research interests, and projects include foreign policy and relations, religious minorities, reformist thought, and business and entrepreneurs of Iran. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iran, 36 Years After the Revolution" by Nazila Fathi | Nazila Fathi is a journalist, analyst, and media commentator on Iran. She reported out of Iran for nearly two decades until 2009. During this time, she authored over 2,000 articles for the New York Times. Sue also wrote for the Time Magazine, Agence France Press, and the Times and has been a guest speaker on CNN, BBC, CBC, and NPR. She received her Masters of Arts from University of Toronto in Political Science. In 2003, she was awarded the Raoul Wallenberg Fellowship at Lund University and a Nieman Fellowship for journalism at Harvard in 2010-11. She is also the author of The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Battle for Modern Iran, which was published December of 2014. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Story Reading: 'Ghosts of Objects' and 'Seasons of Purgatory'" by Shahriar Mandanipour | Shahriar Mandanipour (Mondanipour), one of the most accomplished writers of contemporary Iranian literature, has held fellowships at Brown University, Harvard University, Boston College, and at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, and he has been a visiting professorship at Brown University, where he taught courses in Persian literature and cinema. His honors include the Mehregan Award for the best Iranian children’s novel of 2004, the 1998 Golden Tablet Award for best fiction in Iran during the previous two decades, and Best Film Critique at the 1994 Press Festival in Tehran. Mandanipour is the author of nine volumes of fiction, one nonfiction book, and more than 100 essays in literary theory, literature and art criticism, creative writing, censorship, and social commentary. From 1999 until 2007, he was Editor-in-Chief of Asr-e Panjshanbeh (Thursday Evening), a monthly literary journal that after 9 years of publishing was banned. Some of his short stories and essays have been published in anthologies such as Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature and Sohrab’s Wars: Counter Discourses of Contemporary Persian Fiction: A Collection of Short Stories and a Film Script; and in journals such as The Kenyon Review, The Literary Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Short works have been published in France, Germany, Denmark, and in languages such Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish. Mandanipour’s first novel to appear in English, Censoring an Iranian Love Story, translated by Sara Khalili and published by Knopf in 2009, was very well received (Los Angeles Times, Guardian, New York Times, etc.). Censoring an Iranian Love Story was named by the New Yorker one of the reviewers’ favorites of 2009, by the Cornell Daily Sun as Best Book of the Year for 2009, and by NPR as one of the best debut novels of the year; it was awarded (Greek ed.) the Athens Prize for Literature for 2011. The novel has been translated and published in 11 other languages and in 13 countries throughout the world. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Women In Contemporary Literature of Iran: Seeking Meaning and Awareness" by Ms. S. Mohammadian | Ms. Sepideh Mohammadian, an accomplished Iranian, lawyer, writer and public intellectual. Her works of fiction and her monographs, mostly on issues dealing with women, offer a fascinating, innovative and daring new look at the question of women, their abuse and their defiance, in Iranian society. She will be giving a talk for us on the subject of "Women In Contemporary Literature of Iran: Seeking Meaning and Awareness." Her experience along with her writings afford her a singular vista to discuss this crucial topic. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Animation Trends in Iran after the Revolution" by Pouya Afshar | Pouya Afshar is an alumnus from the California Institute of Arts Character Animation department and is a graduate of University of California Los Angeles Graduate Department of Film and Television focusing in Animation and Digital Media. He has exhibited his work as an animator and visual artist throughout Los Angeles and United States at renowned locations such as Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center, Bovard Auditorium at University of Southern California, Royce Hall at University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Monica Art studios, 18th street Art Center, Art Miami/Context and Shulamit Gallery. Pouya is the creator, character designer and producer of the animated series "Rostam in Wonderland." He is currently an Assistant Professor of art at University of Massachusetts, Lowell. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Locating Iranian Historical Memory: the Transformation from Zoroastrianism to Islam" by M. Kamali | Maryam Kamali is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. She focuses on the social history and historiography of the Middle East and Central Asia and currently teaches courses on the History of the Middle East and Women in the Islamic Middle East at Harvard. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Women in Iranian Fiction" by Parinoush Saniee | Parinoush Saniee is an Iranian born writer, trained as a psychologist but has garnered an international reputation as a writer of fiction that focuses on the plight of Iranian women. Her work is especially intriguing because she combines her experience as a psychologist with her talent as a writer of fiction. Her books include My Share, The Father of the Other One, and Those Who Left and Those Who Stayed. | 5/30/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Evolution of Goodness: Empathy in Animals and Humans" by Dr. Frans de Waal | Does morality come from God, as many religions believe, offering a foundation of theocracy, or could there be biological explanations that have more to do with evolution than Divine design? In this lecture, De Waal will discuss the sense of fairness in animals and will review expressions of empathy in animals. Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal is a Dutch/American biologist and primatologist known for his work on the behavior and social intelligence of primates. He is currently C. H. Candler Professor in the Psychology Department of Emory University and Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Center, in Atlanta, Georgia. | 5/24/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Emergence of 'New Eloquence': Reflections of Houshang Golshiri's Prose" by Amir Arian | Amir Ahmadi Arian is an Iranian writer and translator. He has published a collection of stories, Fragments of a Crime in 2005, and his novel, The Cogwheels, published in 2009, was shortlisted for Golshiri award. His translation work includes novels by Paul Auster, Cormac Mccarthy, E.L. Doctorow, and P.D James into Persian. | 5/24/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Tinker, Tailor, Father, Spy" by Cyrus Copeland | The son of an American father and Iranian mother, Cyrus M. Copeland’s new book, Off the Radar, is a memoir about his father accused of being a CIA agent by the Islamic Republic and his mother’s attempt to defend him in military court. | 5/24/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iranian Intellectuals of the 1960's" by Massoud Behnoud | Massoud Behnoud is an Iranian journalist and writer and lifelong proponent of freedom of speech and press. He has founded newspapers and magazines and also authored 17 books on contemporary Iranian history, compilations of short essays and stories, and biographical historical novels. He has been a journalist for the BBC World services since 1992. | 5/24/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Literature of Migration" by Majid Roshangar | Majid Roshangar, editor in chief of the Persian Book Review since 1965, had a long and distinguished career as a publisher, editor, and author in Iran. He also holds an MA in Government from the University of New South Wales, Australia and served in Iran’s Foreign Service in the 1960s and 1970s. | 5/24/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"The Republic of Imagination: Iranian Women's Bestselling Novels" by Dr. Kamran Talattof | Dr. Kamran Talattof is professor of Persian of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona. He has published widely on issues of gender, sexuality, ideology, culture, and language pedagogy. His lecture will provide textual and discursive analyses of Iranian women's bestselling novels of the last two decades, placing them in the context within which they were published and read to reveal what they say about society's desire for reform, democracy, and civility. | 5/24/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Iran and South Africa" by Dr. Houchang Chehabi | Dr. Houchang Chehabi is a Professor of International Relations and History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. His lecture discusses the close relationship Iran and South Africa have had since the 1970s and the evolution of this relationship, touching on politics, economics, and religion. Co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for African Studies. | 5/24/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from Diaspora" by Nima Naghibi | Nima Naghibi is Chair and Associate Professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her research is in the areas of postcolonial and diaspora studies, and life narratives with particular attention to questions of human rights and social justice. She is the author of the books Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from the Diaspora (Minnesota Press, 2016) and Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran (Minnesota Press, 2007), and many essays and articles. | 5/23/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"A Bridge Taken for a Wall, a Wall Taken for a Bridge" by Jahan Ramazani | Jahan Ramazani is University Professor and Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is currently writing a book on poetry in a global age. This talk on poetry, art, and East-West translation ranges from ancient Iran to medieval Byzantium and the Abbasid era to modern Iran and Ireland. The lecture is in three parts. The first looks at the Persian artistic influences via Byzantium on a modern Irish poet that have passed largely unrecognized (a bridge taken for a wall). The second looks at a Persian poet whose accessibility in English translation has perhaps been overestimated (a wall taken for a bridge). The third attempts a synthesis in another Persian poet who can help us think about culture as both bridge and wall. After exploring poems by Yeats, Rumi, and Behbahani, the lecture reflects on "world" poetry and translation, and it offers suggestions for the uses of a global comparative frame for lyric poetry. | 5/23/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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"A Reflection on My Last Novel: Ask the Mirror" by Chahla Chafiq | Chahla Chafiq is an author, researcher, and human rights activist. Chahla's writings both in Persian and French include essays, research articles, short stories, and novels. She discusses her newest book, Ask the Mirror (2015), and reflects on literature and exile. Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts. | 5/23/2018 | Free | View in iTunes |
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