Conference Program - Full

Panel 1: Old and New Forms, Media, and Techniques of Visual Representation in Nineteenth-Century Iran and Ottoman Empire

• Lale Uluç Boğaziçi University, Turkey
• Basak Tekin Erciyes University, Turkey
  A Qajar Period Lion Depicted Miraj Miniature: An Iconographical Analysis Based on Safavid Religious and Cultural Connections
• Mahbobe Ghods Columbia University, US
  Illustrious Illustrations: The Life and Influence of Ali Quli Koie
• Başak Kilerci Bogazic University, Turkey
  Painting and Photography in Qajar Iran and Ottoman Empire

Panel 2: (P) The Social Elite, Court Life, and the State in the Safavid Period

• Kadir Turgut Istanbul University, Turkey
• Nozhat Ahmadi Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  The Social Base of the Elite during the Reign of Shah Abbas I show abstract

  Shah Abbas era is rightly considered to have been meritocratic. While outstanding individuals rose to various social arenas, we still know little about the factors that contributed to this condition. This paper offers a survey of the high officials of Abbas’ government clarifying their status, social milieu, and the procedure for their selection. We ask whether kinship ties helped in taking hold of an office or whether considerations of merit had a role. What qualities —social status, lineage and personal traits — may have counted for a given position? And what differences may be found in Shah Abbas’ assignments between the early, mid, and later years of his reign? Text and statistical analysis of chronicles of the period constitute the foundations of this paper.
• Fatemeh Orouji University of Tabriz, Iran
  The Method of Women's Education in the Safavid Royal Harem
• Farahnaz Bahrampour Tabriz Central Library, Iran
  State Budget and Financial Planning in the Safavid Era

Panel 3: Iran in Late Antiquity (I): Resistance, Surrender, Co-Existence, and Integration

• Parvaneh Pourshariati Ohio State University, United States
• Mehrdad Ghodrat Dizaji Urmia University, Iran
  The First Arab Conquests in Sasanian Azerbaijan show abstract

  One of the interesting subjects in Sasanian studies is the situations of Iranian provinces during the late Sasanian and early Islamic periods. Despite the importance of Azarbaijan for the Sasanians, the fall of Sasanian rule and Arab conquests in this province has not been thoroughly studied. An analysis of present sources and the process of events reveal that the collapse of Sasanian rule in Azarbaijan had already begun with the defeat of Sasanian forces by the Byzantine army of Heraclius in AD 627. After that, the province was no longer within the power of the Sasanians. The defeat of the Sasanian forces by Byzantium is one of the main reasons for the quick penetration of Arabs into Azarbaijan. According to the Arabic sources, this infiltration occurred during the caliphate of ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb, between the years AH 18-22/AD 639-643. According to Balādhurī, the first conqueror of Azarbaijan was Hudhayfa b. Yamān who arrived in Ardabīl and made a peace treaty with the marzbān. After him, ‘Utba b. Farqad al-Sulamī went from Shahrizūr to Urmia and put pressure on the inhabitants. In AH 22/AD 643, the Mūqhān region and some parts of the lower shore of the Aras River fell through Sarāqa b. Bukair. However, the resistance against Arabs in this province was local. The resisting forces had their own innovative way of fighting the Arabs, but after a while they had to compromise with them.
• Fariba Taghavi Independent Scholar, United States
  Sex, Wine and Murder: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of the Barmakids
• Safura Borumand Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran
  The Bukhtishu Family: Physicians or Politicians - A Survey of Their Influence at the Abbasid Court

Panel 4: Modes and Limits of Cultural Translation

• William BeemanUniversity of Minnesota, United States
• Gholamreza Ijad Sabzevar Teacher Training University, Iran
  A Postcolonial Critique of English Translations of Rubáiyát of Khayyam
• Katayoun Pakatchi Iranian Linguistics Association, Tehran, Iran
  Domestication and Foreignization in Translations of Children`s Literature Over Time
• Hossein Nazari University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  Orientalist Fiction in Naipaul's Non-Fiction: Representations of Iran and Islam in Beyond Belief

Panel 5: Literary Appropriations and Innovations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

• Aftandil Erkinov Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies, Uzbekistan
• Sibel Kocaer School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
  Rastin Mehri School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
  The Ottoman Vīs u Rāmin: The Translation and Alteration of a Pre-Islamic Romance
• Paul Losensky Indiana University, Bloomington, US
  Poet as Anthologist: Defining a Fresh Tradition in the Bayāż of Sāʾeb Tabrīzī

Panel 6: Frontier Lives and Interfaces in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

• Linda Darling University of Arizona, United States
• Akihiko Yamaguchi University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo, Japan
  Settlement Patterns and the Religious Composition of Early Eighteenth-Century Iran According to Ottoman Fiscal Surveys
• Metin Atmaca Freiburg University, Germany
  Between Two Sects Between Two States: Sulaimaniya on the Ottoman-Iranian Frontier
• Joanna de Groot University of York, UK
  Another Look at The Desert and the Sown: Nomads, Rulers and Settled Communities in the Kerman Region in the Nineteenth Century

Panel 7: Dimensions of Social Inequality in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Iran

• Hassanali Mehran International Monetary Fund, United States
• Ali Banuazizi Boston College, United States
  Education, Occupation and Social Mobility in Pre-Revolutionary Iran
• Djavad Salehi-Isfahani Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, United States
  Equality of Opportunity in Education in Iran show abstract

  Ideas about economic justice figure prominently in Iran's political discourse, but the public debate follows a narrow interpretation of economic justice limited to equality of outcomes. Missing from the debate is the concept of equality of opportunities, defined as the extent to which circumstances beyond an individual's control determine her outcomes. In this paper I study inequality of opportunity in education in Iran both in attainment, measured by years of schooling, as well as in achievement, measured by scores of Iranian 8 graders in international math and science tests. I show that while gender as a circumstance is no longer a source of inequality, family background and the characteristics of the community in which a child grows up heavily influence his or her chances of success in education.
• Valentine M. Moghadam Northeastern University, Boston, United States
  Explaining the Gender Gap in Employment and Political Participation in Iran

Panel 8: Seljuq Architecture of Iran (sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

• Sussan Babaie The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK
• Robert Hillenbrand University of Edinburgh, UK
  Structure versus Ornament in the Seljuq Architecture of Iran
• Lorenz Korn University of Bamberg, Germany
  Monuments of Sunni Faith? Inscriptions and Architecture of Seljuq Iranian Domed Mosques
• Alireza Anisi Iran Cultural Heritage Organization, Tehran, Iran
  The Friday Mosque at Ardabil: A Re-Examination

Panel 9: Immigrants and Diasporic Identities

• Laleh Shahideh University of San Francisco, United States
• Vahideddin Namazi Université de Montréal, Canada
  A Study of the Entrepreneurship of Iranian Immigrants in Canada show abstract

  This paper presents the life-experiences and the professional trajectories of forty immigrants working as drivers at a Montreal taxi company. A number of participants formed business partnerships with other Iranian immigrants. However, these partnerships were between partners who barely knew each other, and in every case, a lack of technical expertise and business know-how led to the collapse of the businesses. While other studies have been critical of the cultural and work behaviors of Iranian immigrants, this study has found that these same characteristics, when observed within the parameters of a well managed work environment, have had a positive impact on the performance and functioning of this company.
• Behzad Sarmadi University of Toronto, Canada
  An Iranian 'Bachelor' in Dubai: The Politics and Social Hierarchies of Urban Transformation

Panel 10: Ideology & Perceptions of Iran's Security in the Islamic Republic's Regional and International Policy Making

• TBA
• Leila Salehiravesh University of Vienna, Austria
  Regional Development and Iranian Perceptions of Energy Security
• George Sanikidze Ilia State University, Georgia
  Islamic Factor in the Politics of Iran and Turkey toward Georgia

Panel 11: Gender, Empowerment, and Violence

• Afsaneh Kalantary, Cultural Anthropologist, United States
• Zahra Tizro York St. John University, UK
  Iranian Women's and Men's Narratives on Marriage, Love and Violence within Marital Relationship
• Roksana Bahramitash Université de Montréal, Canada
  Gender and Entrepreneurship in Iran

Panel 12: Iran and India: Dialogues on Civilization, Culture, Religion and Identity

• Homa Katouzian St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK
• Monica Ringer Amherst College, United States
  The 'Dakhmeh' Debate: Zoroastrian Ritual Practice between Tradition and Scientific Modernity show abstract

  This paper explores the controversy surrounding the Zoroastrian abandonment of the dakhmeh in Tehran in 1935 as a window onto Zoroastrian modernism and Parsi-Irani relations. Kay Khosrow Shahrokh, head of the Zoroastrian Anjoman in Tehran, Member of Parliament, and champion of the abandonment of the dakhmeh, believed strongly in the need for Zoroastrian religious reform and religion’s profound relationship to citizenship, nationalism and Zoroastrian identity. The arguments marshaled in the dakhmeh dispute were symptomatic of religious debates circulating amongst the Parsi and Irani Zoroastrian communities in a period defined by modernist attempts to revisit and revise Zoroastrian tradition.
• Afshin Marashi University of Oklahoma, United States
  Patron and Patriot: Dinshah Irani and the Revival of Indo-Iranian Culture
• Reza Zia-Ebrahimi St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK
  An Emissary of the Golden Age: Manekji Limji Hataria in Pre-Nationalist Iran
• Dinyar Patel Harvard University, United States
  The Iran League of Bombay: Parsis and the Appeal of Pahlavi Nationalism

Panel 13: New Perspectives on the Art and Archaeology of Hellenistic and Middle Iranian Western and Central Asia (330 BCE-642 CE)

• Askold IvantchikUniversity of Bordeaux III, France
• Rachel Mairs Merton College, University of Oxford, UK
  Ai Khanoum and the Achaemenids
• Carlo LippolisUniversità degli Studi di Torino, Italy
  A Ceremonial Centre for the Arsacid Kings: Parthian Nisa
• Fiona Kidd University of Sydney, Australia
  Hellenism at Akchakhan-kala? The Painting and Visual Culture of Middle Iranian Chorasmia
• Matthew Canepa University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, United States
  New Images of Iranian Kingship in the Middle Iranian Era: Rupture and Innovation in the Art and Ritual of Iranian Kingship

Panel 14: Iranian Historiography (I): The Turko-Mongol Period (sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

• Charles Melville University of Cambridge, UK
• Andrew Peacock University of St Andrews, US
  Historiography under the Great Seljuqs: Sources, Themes and Patronage
• Stefan Kamola University of Washington, United States
  Authority and Influence in Late Ilkhanid Historiography
• Birgitt Hoffmann University of Bamberg, Germany
  Themes, Narratives and Explanations in the Historical Writings of Hamd-Allāh Mustaufi
• Sevket Kücükhüseyin University of Bamberg, Germany
  Āqsarā'ī's Musāmarat al-Akhbār: A Guideline of Good Governance for Timurtāsh b. Chobān?

Panel 15: Iranians in Istanbul

• Touraj Atabaki International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Farzin Vejdani University of Arizona, United States
  Contesting Iranian Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Istanbul
• Anja Pistor Hatam University of Kiel, Germany
  Iranian Merchants as 'Concerned Individuals': Persian Networking in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul
• Houchang E. Chehabi Boston University, United States
  Mir Mehdi Varzandeh: A Cosmopolitan Patriot

Panel 16: Animals in Iranian History

• Richard W. Bulliet Columbia University, United States
• Alan Mikhail Yale University, US
  Animals in the Ottoman Empire: The Safavid Connection
• Arash Khazeni Pomona College, United States
  Through an Ocean of Sand: Pastoralism and the Equestrian Culture of the Eurasian Steppe
• Abbas Amanat Yale University, United States
  Speaking Donkeys as Human Alter Egos

Panel 17: (P) Architectural Styles & Sacred and Profane Spaces and Cityscapes since the 13th Century

• Seyyed Hossein Hosseiniseddiq Islamic Azad University, Gorgan, Iran
• Seyyed Mohsen Hosseini Islamic Research Foundation of Astan-e Quds-e Razavi, Iran
  A New Perspective on the Faryumad Jāmeʿ Mosque and its Inscriptions Based of Recent Documentation
• Bagher Pourjavad Asl Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization of East Azerbaijan, Tabriz, Iran
  A Comparative Study of Architecture and Urbanism in Tabriz and Istanbul in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
• Alireza Azarpour Tabriz Islamic Art University, Iran
  The Image of an Iranian City

Panel 18: Writing in the "Diaspora": Authorship, Representation, Audience, Circulation, & Reception

• Goulia Ghardashkhan Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
• Sanaz Fotouhi University of New South Wales, Australia
  Diasporic Iranian Literature in English and Representations of History
• Somaye Malekian Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
  Construction of Identity through the Relationship between Self and Other: A Postcolonial Reading of Firoozeh Dumas' Funny in Farsi and Laughing Without an Accent
• Leila Pazargadi Nevada State College, United States
  See(k)ing the Self: Investigating the Serialization of Iranian-American Memoirs
• Babak Elahi Rochester Institute of Technology, United States
  At the Threshold of Iranian Studies

Panel 19: Linguistic Encounters between Turkish and Iranian Languages

• John Perry University of Chicago, US
• Oleg Kshanovskyi Shevchenko National University, Kiev, Ukraine
  Early Turkic Migrations in Western Iran According to Linguistic Data show abstract

  This paper discusses the generally accepted historical version about coming of the first Turks in the Middle East only in XI century A.D., which does not meet the linguistic reality. Indo-European structure of Persian language began to change its fusion type to Turkic agglutinate structure long before XI century, that is, according to most historians, long before the active relationship with the speakers of Turkic dialects. The most of more than twenty features in all levels, conjugated with agglutinate technique of morphemes bounding, were not observed in Old Persian. However, in Middle Persian at all levels one can find the elements specific to agglutinate languages. It is obvious that Persian language during the period from ancient to modern under the strong external influence changed its fusion morphological type to agglutinative.
• Chiara Barbati Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
  Notes on the Turco-Sogdian Variety show abstract

  In 1990, N. Sims-Williams and J. Hamilton published late Sogdian texts containing a number of Turkish elements and described their language as “turco-sogdien” (Documents turco-sogdiens du IX -X siècle de Touen-houang, London). In 2009, Y. Yoshida, on the occasion of the Festschrift in honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams, analyzed in detail the linguistic features of these texts. Giving consideration to some of Yoshida's statements, this paper focuses on discussing two specific points, namely, the plural ending -t as a marker of plural for the first and second person plural pronouns and the enclitic pronouns placed after nouns, in order to explain whether they are Turkicisms or not.
• Ketevan Gadilia Institute for Bible Translation, Moscow, Russia
  On the Nature of Direct Object Marking

Panel 20: Shifting Perspectives: Narrative Strategies and their Effects in Classical Persian Poetry

• Fatemeh Shams Esmaeili University of Oxford, UK
• Cameron Cross University of Chicago, United States
  Killed by Fate, Buried in Snow: The Paradox of Just Kingship in the Shāhnāma
• Edmund Hayes University of Chicago, United States
  The Fate of the Nations: History, Narrative Strategy and Communal Identity in 9th-11th Century Iran
• Richard Gabri Northwestern University, United States
  Framing Language in Ferdowsi's Shāhnāma
• Laurie Pierce University of Chicago, United States
  Storytelling and Structure: the Unique Organizing Vision of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār

Panel 21: The Ottomans and the Safavids in a Persianate World: Convergences and Divergences

• Sara Nur Yıldız Orient-Institut Istanbul, Turkey
• Snjezana Buzov Ohio State University, United States
  Persianate Origins of the Ottoman Kanun
• Kaya Şahin Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
  From Metadoxy to Orthodoxy: The Safavid Problem and the Birth of Ottoman Sunnī Islam
• Sooyong Kim Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
  Persian Poets and Their Place in the Emerging Ottoman Canon of the Sixteenth Century
• Ferenc Csirkés University of Chicago, United States
  Chaghatay Oration, Ottoman Eloquence, Qizilbash Rhetoric: Turkish Literature in Safavid Iran

Panel 22: Iranian Graphic Design and Contemporary Visuality (workshop sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

• Sussan Babaie The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK
• Reza Abedini Graphic Designer, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Shabnam Rahimi-Golkhandan University of Toronto, Canada
• Shahrzad Changalvaee Graphic Designer and Artist, Tehran, Iran
• Iman Raad Graphic Designer, Tehran, Iran

Panel 23: Urban Politics and Social Classes in Tehran

• Dariush Borbor Architect and Urban Planner, Tehran, Iran
• Mina Saeidi University of Nanterre Paris, France
  Parvin Ghassemi University of Tehran, Iran
  Public Intervention, Private Investment and Participation of the Inhabitants in Urban Policies in Tehran
• Azam Khatam York University, Canada
  Beyond Navvāb Highway: Urban Modernism and Economic “Rationality” in Tehran
• Marjan Hajjari University of Melbourne, Australia
  The Notion of “Urban Public Space” in North and South of Tehran

Panel 24: Shifting Aesthetics, New Readings: Poetic and Musical Transitions in Iran

• TBA
• Gay Breyley Monash University, Australia
  Nazila T University of Tehran, Iran
  The Glass House is Black: Poetics and Power in the Work of Forough and Nazila show abstract

  This paper examines the work of the iconic Forough Farrokhzad and the contemporary rapper ‘Apranik’. It focuses on their respective representations in Farrokhzad’s film The House is Black (1962) and Rahmanian and Hibbard’s The Glass House (2008). While Farrokhzad, as director, mediates her vision of a marginalised world, ‘Apranik’ belongs to a marginalised community mediated by the Glass House directors. However, across decades and poetic genres, the two women share both common obstacles and an agency that is articulated through their texts. Through analysis of their different contexts and poetic practices, this paper explores some of the ways poetics and power relations have changed in Iran over the last fifty years, as well as aspects that have shown little change.
• Sasan Fatemi University of Tehran, Iran
  Shifting Aesthetics of Iranian Vocal Music: From Farabi to Contemporary Tastes show abstract

  This paper explores shifts in aesthetics of Iranian vocal music, especially the tasnif, over the past century. It examines historical context and analyses the relationship between music and lyrics, arguing that poetry’s dominant role in contemporary music ensues from a pedagogical approach dating from the early twentieth century. While all evidence suggests that contemporary aesthetics differ significantly from those of the distant past, the issue of musical aesthetics is longstanding. Farabi considered the effects of the relationship between music and poetry on structure and meaning, complexity and perceived beauty. This paper examines the relevance of Farabi’s theories to contemporary debate. It addresses notions of ‘classical’ and ‘popular’, and the roles of music and poetry in religious and other contexts.
• Leila Sadeghi Author, Iran
  From Macro and Micro Structures to a Novel Structure: Macro-fiction in “Hunting the Shadow”, by Ebrahim Golestan show abstract

  According to Van Dijk, all phenomena have macro and micro structures. This paper examines the interaction of these structures, resulting in a novel one: Macro-fiction. Macro-fiction is a layer of patchy structures, joined together to build an unsaid story. Separate stories are connected through the cohesive elements they share. Moreover, the cognitive mechanism and information structure of a story in micro-structure level is in harmony with the plot and the general idea of the fiction. This idea is inspired of classic Persian literature such as “The Conference of the Birds” (1177) and continued in contemporary literature as well. This paper demonstrates what macro-fiction is and how it could be created in a fictional discourse of Ebrahim Golestan's short story collection, “Hunting the Shadow”.

Panel 25: Literary and Poetic Styles and Innovations (Eleventh to Thirteenth Century)

• Julia Rubanovich Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
• Christine van Ruymbeke University of Cambridge, UK
  Belles-Lettristic Early-Medieval Persian Mirror for Princes
• Christine Noelle-Karimi Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
  Across the Hindu Kush: Notions of Space in Sanā’ī’s Karnāma-i Balkhī
• Seyede Pouye Khoshkhoosani University of Arizona, United States
  Complexity in Language: Nizāmī Ganjavī and Metaphors  

Panel 26: (P) Diplomacy in Qajar and Early Pahlavi Periods

• Elham Malekzadeh Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran
• Nasrollah Salehi Encyclopaedia Islamica Foundation, Tehran, Iran
  Mīrzā Muheb-Ali Khān Nāzim al-Mulk: And the Issue of Iran & Ottoman Delimitation
• Ahad Ebadi Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran
  Diplomatic Missions in Tabriz during the Constitutional Revolution: The Ottoman Consulate
• Abolfazl Shahsavanpor and University of Tabriz, Iran
  Jalil Nayebian University of Tabriz, Iran
  German-Iranian Political and Economic Relations in the Weimar Era, 1918-1933

Panel 27: Iran & Israel: Beyond Diehard Banalities and Clichés

• Farhad Kazemi New York University, United States
• Lior Sternfeld University of Texas at Austin, United States
  The Unexpected Allies: Mosaddeq and the Israeli Right Wing
• Orly Rahimiyan Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
  From the "New Jew" to the "Little Satan": The "Israeli" in Iranian Eyes since the Latter Part of the Twentieth Century

Panel 28: Heterotopic Spaces and Identities in Modern Persian Literature

• Claus V. Pedersen University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Ahmad Shakeri University of Limoges, France
  The Return: In Search of Utopia; Representation of Utopia in André Gide and Jalal Āl-e Ahmad's Books
• Ali Ferdowsi Notre Dame de Namur University, United States
  National Mysticism: The Unity of Author (biography/literature) and Nation (land and history) in Ismail Fasih's Work
• Ahmad Mola Independent Scholar, Iran
  Transgressing the Boundaries of Sub-Culturalism: “Tetraglot” Narrative Strategies in Shahriar Mandanipour

Panel 29: New Evidence for Pre-Islamic Iranian Religious and Epic Traditions: The Manichaean Kephalaia Manuscript at the Chester Beatty Library

• Zsuzsanna Gulacsi Northern Arizona University, United States
• Jason BeDuhn Northern Arizona University, United States
  Iranian Epic in the Chester Beatty Kephalaia
• Paul Dilley University of Iowa, United States
  The "Law of Zaarades": New Sources for Zarathustra in the Chester Beatty Kephalaia
• Iain Gardner University of Sydney, Australia
  Mani's Last Days

Panel 30: Female Religious Authority in Twentieth-Century Shi‘ism

• Abbas Amanat Yale University, United States
• Roja Fazaeli Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

  Mirjam Kuenkler Princeton University, United States

  Mujtahidas in the Islamic Republic of Iran: New Opportunities for Old Role Models?
• Irene Schneider University of Göttingen, Germany
  The Discourse about CEDAW: Voices of Female Jurists in Iran

Panel 31: Words, Naming, Referentiality, and Cross-Cultural and Intra-Cultural Translation and Interpretation

• Maia Sakhokia Institute of Oriental Studies, Tbilisi, Georgia
• Farhang Farbod Independent Scholar, Iran
  Popular Beliefs of the Persian-Speaking People as Reflected in Borhân-e Qâti’
• Susanne Kurz Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany
  Sexual Intercourse and Its Meanings: Ethical and Medical Aspects of Indo-Persian Erotological Treatises
• Shafique Virani University of Toronto, Canada
  Ismāʿīlīsm: An Orismological Approach

Panel 32: The Persian Tradition of Practical Geometry

• Hooman KolijiUniversity of Maryland, College Park, United States
• Elaheh Kheirandish Harvard University, United States
  Persian Sources on Practical Geometry
• Carol Bier Textile Museum, Washington, DC, United States
  Persian Monuments of Practical Geometry show abstract

  This paper explores the ceramic technologies of fired brick that were used in the structure and ornament of tomb monuments at Kharraqan and Maragha. Considering historical cultural contexts, comparative architectural data, and contemporary treatises on geometry, this study fosters renewed appreciation of geometry and its applications in pre-Mongol Iran. For more than a century before Hulegu Khan appointed Nasir al-Din Tusi as chief astronomer to establish an observatory at Maragha, artisans were constructing local monuments with the most elaborate geometry ever yet seen in Iranian architecture – all made of clay. Visually complex ornament of cornices with muqarnas, recessed niches and arches, panels with extraordinary patterns, and unique three-dimensional structures -- all captivate attention, with beauty perceived but resistant to easy analysis.
• Jan P. Hogendijk University of Utrecht, Netherlands
  Practical Geometry in Isfahan: an Exceptional Tiling in the Friday Mosque

Panel 33: “Meet Me in Lālah-Zār!”

• Houman Sarshar Independent Scholar, United States
• Shabnam Rahimi-Golkhandan University of Toronto, Canada
  Pre-Revolutionary Tehran and the Making of a Revolutionary Pop Art
• Farzaneh Hemmasi University of Pennsylvania, United States
  Listening To and Through: Pre-Revolutionary Musiqi-ye Pāp and Political Ambiguity
• Golbarg Rekabtalaei University of Toronto, Canada
  FilmFarsi: Public Morale in an Immoral Popular Cinema show abstract

  'Film-Farsi,' charged with “corruption,” “immorality,” and “Westoxication,” has been almost fully dismissed in both pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary literature on cinema. In this paper I contend that the Iranian commercial cinema of 1950s-1970s, informed by Hollywood, Indian and Egyptian cinemas, was substantial in revealing difference by exhibiting local references and moral lessons contextualised in the socio-historical dynamics of Iran, while already embedded in a global order. I argue that 'Film-Farsi' was important in enacting and facilitating the contestations of Iranian modernity by depicting the negotiations of tradition/modernity, low/high culture, official/unofficial, rural/urban and other societal transformations in a rapidly changing Iran. It was through the negotiations of the problematics of urban transformations that 'Film-Farsi' came to sublimate social tensions in entertaining cinematic forms, especially in commercially successful dancing and singing performances.
• Ida Meftahi University of Toronto, Canada
  The Theatrical and Quotidian Self of the Reel Persian Dancer show abstract

  Coinciding with the expansion of Tehran’s nightlife, since the 1950s, the raqqas(ah)of cabaret entered the cinema screen, gradually dominating the Iranian pre-revolutionary popular cinema. As in private-sector theatres of Lalah-zar, cabarets and kafahs, and the “traditional” mutribi scene, raqqas’s presence guaranteed the financial success of the independent film industry through attracting male audiences. Her character in films often resonated with myths surrounding her in everyday life. Analyzing film-farsi productions from 1950s-1970s, interviews, and the press discourse, this paper examines raqqas as a socio-historical subject. It investigates the social, biopolitical and economic factors that constructed her fictive-self onscreen and conditioned the aesthetics and semiotics of her dancing body onstage.

Panel 34: In the Mirror of Isfahan: Seventeenth-Century Safavid-Ottoman Design

• Massumeh Farhad Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, United States
• May Farhat American University of Beirut, Lebanon
  A Pro-Safavid Silsilename
• Seyed Mohammad Ali Emrani University of Munich, Germany
  Imperial Capitals and Urban Gardens: Isfahan and Istanbul in the Seventeenth century
• Sussan Babaie The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK
  Urban Baroque and European Town Views of Isfahan and Istanbul
• Nuha N. N. Khoury University of California, Santa Barabara, United States
  From the Astrolabe of the Mind: The All-Encompassing City and the Ideal Mosque

Panel 35: Iranian Historiography (II): The Politics of History in Modern Iran (sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation and the British Institute of Persian Studies)

• Charles Melville, University of Cambridge, UK
• Oliver Bast University of Manchester, UK
  Inverting the Gaze: Iranian Historians Writing the History of Europe: The Case of Fereydoun Âdamiyat
• Lloyd Ridgeon University of Glasgow, UK
  Ayatollah Khomeini and his Mystical and ‘Irfāni Writings show abstract

  An important dimension of Ayatollah Khomeini’s worldview is his perspective on mysticism. Some observers witness reflections of this outlook throughout the whole of his life, indeed, it has even been claimed that Khomeini believed he himself had achieved mystical union. The idea of mystical union was discussed by Khomeini in great detail in the 1930s. Subsequently Khomeini remained silent of the mystical tradition until the 1980s when a small volume of his ghazals was published which reflect the deep stylistic influence of Ḥāfiẓ. More intriguingly in a letter prefacing the ghazals, Khomeini denied that he had ever experienced anything mystical. If this claim is to be believed, it falsifies the claim that Khomeini himself had completed the so-called “four journeys”.
• Shahram Kholdi University of Manchester, UK
  Politics of History and Factional Rivalry in the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Ali M. Ansari University of St Andrews, UK
  History, Myth and Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Iran

Panel 36: Science and Culture in the Nīzārite Sphere: the Dustūr al-Munajjimīn and its Contribution to Our Understanding of Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Iran

• Touraj Daryaee, University of California, Irvine, United States
• Mohammad Karimi Zanjani Asl University of Bonn, Germany
  Shāhnāma or ʿAlīnāma? The İmāmite vs Nīzārite Conflict on the Epic Tradition of Iran
• Eva Orthmann University of Bonn, Germany
  Astrology and History: The Dustūr’s place in Islamic Historiography
• Malihe Karbassian University of Bonn, Germany
  The Interspheral Cosmic Palaces in ’Umm al-Kitāb

Panel 37: Patrimony, Religion, Society, and Politics in Qajar Iran

• Joanna de Groot University of York, UK
• Naofumi Abe University of Tokyo, Japan
  Continuity of Patrimony and Islamic Inheritance System in Iran: The Case of Najafqolī Khān Donbolī’s Family in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century
• Nobuaki Kondo Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan
  Shariʿa Court Records from Nineteenth Century Tehran show abstract

  Although the role of the ‘ulama was critically important for the history of nineteenth- century Iran, their daily activities are difficult to describe. In particular, their activity as specialists in Islamic law has been neglected in previous studies. One reason for this has been a lack of sources. Unlike their Ottoman counterparts, Iranian shari‘a court records are scarce and not well-known, and have not been examined extensively by researchers. However, recent discoveries of Iranian shari‘a court records have make it possible to use them for research. In this paper, I analyze three court registers from nineteenth-century Tehran to explore the functions of shari‘a courts in that society.
• Mateo Farzaneh Northeastern Illinois University, United States
  Between Piety and Self Interest: Struggle between Akhund Khurasani and Shaykh Fazlullah Nuri
• James M. Gustafson Western Washington University, United States
  The Household Politics of Revolution: The Ahmadis of Kerman in the Constitutional Movement

Panel 38: The Crisis of Legitimacy: Transformations in Governance and Civil Society in the Contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran

• Paola Rivetti Dublin City University, Ireland
• Maaike Warnaar University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  Iran's Competing Discourses of Regime Legitimacy
• Paola Maria Raunio University of St Andrews, UK
  From Ballots to Bullets: The Iranian Women’s Rights Movement after the Presidential Election of 2009
• Marianne Boee University of Bergen, Norway
  The Quest for Codification of Family Law in Contemporary Iran: Conceptions of Nation, Gender and Religion
• Shabnam J. Holliday University of Plymouth, UK
  'Democracy’ as a Source of Legitimacy in Contemporary Iran

Panel 39: Language and Historiography in Early Ottoman-Iranian Encounters

• Fariba Zarinebaf University of California, Riverside, United States
• Ali Anooshahr University of California, Davis, United States
  The Fate of Persian in Early Ottoman Historiography: The Hasht Bihisht of Idris Bitlisi
• Hasan Karatas University of St. Thomas, United States
  Amasya: The Ottoman Window to Iran in the Fifteenth Century
• Emine Fetvaci Boston University, United States
  Şehinşehname of Mehmed III: An Unexamined Ottoman History in Persian Verse
• Baki Tezcan University of California, Davis, United States
  The Ottomans in the Persian World History of Lari (d. 1572)

Panel 40: Rethinking Transnational Iranian Women's Activism: Challenges, Frameworks and Modalities

• Nasrin Rahimieh University of California, Irvine, United States
• Philip Grant University of California, Irvine, United States
  The End of Mardanegi: Men, Masculinity and the Iranian Women's Movement
• Esha Momeni University of California, Los Angeles, United States
  Women, the Women's Movement and the State: the Limits of Reformism
• Negar Sammaknejad University of California, Irvine, United States
  The Effect of the Emigration of Women's Movement Activists on the Iranian Women's Movement Subsequent to the 2009 Presidential Elections
• Leyli Behbahani School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
  Possibilities of Transnational Feminist Activism: a Study of Two Iranian Networks

Panel 41: The Place of Space in Modern Iranian Literature

• M.R. Ghanoonparvar University of Texas at Austin, United States
• Blake Atwood University of Texas at Austin, United States
  Tehran’s Textual Topography: Mapping Urban Youth Culture in Yusef Abad, 33rd Street
• Dena Afrasiabi University of Texas at Austin, United States
  Madman in the Attic: Illness, Space and Gender in Goli Taraqqi's Scattered Memories
• Ahmad Aminpour University of Texas at Austin, United States
  Housing the Homeland

Panel 42: Ismāʿīlī Thought in Persian Poetry and Prose

• Farhad Daftary Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK
• Eric Ormsby Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK
  Nasir-i Khusraw’s Final Summation of Religion and Philosophy
• Alice C. Hunsberger City University of New York, Hunter College, United States
  Nasir-i Khusraw’s Philosophy of the Intellect and Soul Dynamics
• Sayyad Jalal Badakhchani Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK
  Poems of the Resurrection: A New Diwan show abstract

  Hitherto unknown and recovered in 1958 during the renovation of an old building in the vicinity of Birjand the Diwan-i Qa’imiyyat or Poems of the Resurrection constitute 157 odes (4784 hemstitches) dealing with the history, theology and hermeneutic rendering of the religious doctrines of the Nizari Ismailis during their governance of numerous fortresses in Iran and Syria (1090-1256). Its recovery has been described in Iran as an ‘event’ in the history and development of Persian poetry. Hasan was close friend of the famous Iranian philosopher-scientist Nasir al-Din Tusi and consequently his poems reflects some of the ideas expressed in Tusi’s writings.
• Nadia Eboo-Jamal Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK
  Ismāʿīlī History in the Poetry of Nizari Quhistani

Evening Program: Opening Remarks, Awards Ceremony, and Reception, sponsored by the Association for Iranian Studies

Panel 43: (Re-)Thinking Iranian Studies: A Workshop on the Academic Study of Iran (workshop)

• Syed Akhtar Husain Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
• Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi University of Toronto, Canada
• Ali Mirsepassi New York University, US

Panel 44: Performing Arts Before and After the 1979 Revolution

• William Beeman University of Minnesota, United States
• Jane Lewisohn School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
  Archiving and Preserving the Endangered Archives of the Twentieth-Century Iranian Performing Arts
• Parmis Mozafari University of Leeds, UK
  The Centre for the Preservation and Propagation of the Traditional Music of Iran: Formation, Activities and Long-Term Impacts

Panel 45: (P) Islam, Politics, and Society from the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth Century

• Kamal Haj Seyed Javadi Higher Education Center for Cultural Heritage, Tehran, Iran
• Morteza Ghassembagloo Independent Scholar, Iran
  The Position of Shī’īsm in Iran from the Time of the Mongol Invasion to the Founding of the Safavid Dynasty on the Basis of Numismatic Evidence
• Mahmoodreza Esfandiar Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
  The Meaning of “Mahdaw ī’at” (Mahdism) and Its Religious, Political, and Social Implications in the Safavid Era
• Ghaffar Abdollahi University of Isfahan, Iran
  Abolhassan Mīrzā “Shaykh al-Ra’īs Qajār”: The Harbinger Prince of Pan-Islam

Panel 46: Being, Reality, Self, and Knowledge from Mullā Ṣadrā to Immanuel Kant: From Ontological Argument to Synthetic Judgment in Iranian Intellectual Milieus

• Maria Dakake George Mason University, United States
  “Knowing Things as They Really Are”: Knowledge and Spiritual Hierarchy in Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and Mullā Ṣadrā
• Mohammed Rustom Carleton University, Canada
  Ontology and Cosmogony in Mullā Ṣadrā's Scriptural Hermeneutics
• Roman Seidel University of Zurich, Switzerland
  Reading Kant in Teheran: On the Iranian Reception of Kantian Philosophy

Panel 47: Descriptive Imagery and Dramatic Elements in the Avesta

• Mehrdad Shabahang École pratique des hautes études, Sorbonne University, Paris, France
• Rahele Koulabadi Sistan and Baluchestan University, Iran
  An Overview of Goddesses Anahita and Ishtar
• Manya Saadi-nejad Concordia University, Canada
  Visual Representations of Anahita in the Avesta
• Seyyedeh Fatemeh Musavi Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran
  Dramatic Elements of Yasna show abstract

  It is widely believed that drama emerged from myth, ritual, and ceremony. Early societies perceived connections between certain actions performed by the group or leaders in the group and the desired results of the whole society. These actions moved from habit, to tradition, and then on to ceremony and ritual. The formulation of these actions, and the consequent repetition and rehearsal, broke the ground for theatre. Accordingly, Yasna, as a ritual text, also contains dramatic elements. In this paper, the text of Yasna will be analyzed closely to see what elements are included. Dramatic elements include acts, dialogue, actors and characters, spectacles and setting.

Panel 48: Constitution, Legislation, and Rights in Contemporary Iran

• Leyla Mostafavi University of Ottawa, Canada
• Mohsen Khalili Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
  The Narrative of Self / Other in the Debates of the Constituent Assembly of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Alireza Shomali Wheaton College, United States
  Debates on Political Secularism in Contemporary Iran: A Critical View
• Sussan Siavoshi Trinity College, United States
  Ayatollah Montazeri and the Concept of Human Rights show abstract

  In his 2004 book on Huqquq (Rights), Montazeri articulates a position that bridges the distance between a traditional and god-centered Islamic conception of human rights, on the one hand, and the human-centered position of the advocates of International Bill of Human Rights, on the other. Montazeri’s position in this book differs from the one he held in an earlier part of his life. This paper investigates the question of whether or not Montazeri’s later position on human rights violates authentic Islamic laws (a narrower and stricter category than Islamic principles). The ultimate goal of the paper is to contribute to the on-going debate about the compatibility of Islamic laws with principles of human rights.

Panel 49: Transculturation, Cultural Translation, and Third Spaces in Modern Poetry

• Zuzanna Olszewska St. John’s College, University of Oxford, UK
• Amr Ahmed Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
  Modern Kurdish Poetry: from Persian Reference to Turkish Model
• Neda Ali Zadeh Kashani Macerata University, Italy
  The Emergence of ‘Ghazal’ in North America among Contemporary Female Poets and Its Socio-Cultural Background: the Cases of Adrienne Rich and Alicia Ostriker
• Leila Samadi Rendy University of Göttingen, Germany
  Poetry of Iranian Women in Diaspora

Panel 50: Persian Curriculum: Language in Context

• Pardis Minuchehr George Washington University, United States
• Azita Mokhtari National University, United States
  Communicative Approaches to Teaching Persian Designed for Heritage Learners
• Ramin Sarraf National University, United States
  Teaching Culture through Infomercials
• Aria Fani Independent Scholar, United States
  Creating Advanced Level Textbooks for Heritage Learners

Panel 51: Post-Revolutionary Persian Literature

• Rivanne Sandler University of Toronto, Canada
• Laetitia Nanquette School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
  The Translations of Modern Persian Literature in the United States, 1979-2011 show abstract

  This paper analyzes the practices of translation from modern Persian literature into English in the United States over the last thirty years, defining where the translation field intersects with the academic, political, and literary fields in the case of Persian translations. The analysis is based on the study of an exhaustive list of the 98 literary texts of modern Persian literature, defined as starting with Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh’s Once Upon a Time (1921), published between 1979 and 2011 and translated into English. It describes the production milieu of modern Persian translations in the American market and analyzes in quantitative and qualitative terms the modern Persian translations.
• Ludmila Yaneva Sofia University, Bulgaria
  The Influence of Gender-Segregated Society and Traditional Norms of Behavior on the Life of Young Iranians and its Depiction in Contemporary Iranian Literature
• Amirhossein Vafa University of Sheffield, UK
  The Problem of Complicity with Hegemonic Masculinity in Goli Taraghi’s Another Place show abstract

  Amir-Ali, the protagonist of In Another Place is a representation of urban middle-class heterosexual masculinity in modern Iran. He is a man in compliance with the power structure of hegemonic masculinity, who benefits from the advantages of patriarchy but does not rigorously practice it. In the context of contemporary Iran, the “patriarchal dividend” is a set of God-given privileges epitomized by the ruling elite in one hegemonic “hypermasculinity” with costly consequences for the majority of men.1 Set in 1998 Tehran, Amir-Ali lives a peaceful married life, though on the verge of a mid-life crisis. I argue that the protagonist’s struggle to comply with hegemonic masculinity is a significant cause of his predicament. In fact, the amalgam of alienating effects within the private and public spheres of Amir-Ali’s life contributes to his ensuing gender anxiety, eventually leading him to fragmentation and respite from society, leaving the hegemonic order intact and evermore effective.

Panel 52: Iran in the Cold War

• James Goode Grand Valley State University, US
• Artemy M. Kalinovsky University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  The Soviet Union and Mosaddeq
• Roham Alvandi London School of Economics, UK
  Kissinger and the Shah's Nuclear Program, 1974-1977
• Barin Kayaoglu University of Virginia, US
  The Close Relations That Never Were: Turkey and Iran in the 1970s

Panel 53: Contemporary Iran and the Hispanic World

• Leila Piran George Washington University, United States
• Marina Díaz Sanz Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
  Views of Iranian Politics in Spain since 2002: A Discourse Analysis of Spanish Newspapers El País and ABC
• Manochehr Dorraj Texas Christian University, United States
  Iran's Relations with Latin America
• Sergio Moya University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica
  Iran and Latin America: Vital Interests and Soft-Power Strategy show abstract

  The approach of the Islamic Republic of Iran to certain Latin American countries under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is one of the newest developments of contemporary international relations. There are combinations of factors that have driven the growing and multi-layered relationship between Iran and these countries since 2005. Iran shares with them a combination of interests: the necessity to find new trade partners, an anti-imperialist ideology, the aspiration to play a larger role on the world´s stage and the desire of foreign policy independence. This article analyzes the political, commercial and strategic dimensions of Iran's foreign policy to Latin America during the presidency of Ahmadinejad and the configuration of a soft power approach to this region.

Panel 54: Sources in Safavid Studies (I): Mirrors-for-Princes (akhlaq)

• Louise Marlow Wellesley College, US
• Maria Subtelny University of Toronto, Canada
  The Fate of Husain Va‘iz Kashifi’s Oeuvre under the Safavids
• Karin Ruehrdanz Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
  Moralizing in a Specious Style show abstract

  This paper analyzes the pictorial program of the earliest extant illustrated copy of Kashifi’s Akhlaq-i Muhsini in the context of a “fake Herat style” that was practiced in Tabriz and Istanbul in the early decades of the 16th century. This style had been shaped to visually accompany collections of lyrical poetry and used the imagery of the princely cycle. With its generic representations of aristocratic pastimes it was not well suited to serve the illustration of moralizing narratives. The paper discusses the implications of the genre-transcending application of the “fake Herat style” in the Akhlaq-i Muhsini and concludes with a tentative attribution of the manuscript.
• Colin Mitchell Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
  A Mirror-for-Lala?: Shah Tahmasp's Farman (1544) to the Governor of Herat
• Sholeh Quinn University of California, Merced, US
  A Late Safavid Mirror for Princes show abstract

  The Risalah dar padishahi-i Safavi is a little known primary source from the late Safavid period. The unique manuscript was published in 2009.The author of the work, a certain Muhammad Yusuf Gurji Naji, composed the Risalah in 1715 during the reign of Shah Sultan Husayn (r. 1694-1722). This paper will analyze one section of the treatise, titled “kingship is from God,” in light of its references to Shah Isma‘il. These consist of mostly hadith and also other types of sources, all of which Naji point to as foretelling Isma‘il’s rise to power. The paper concludes by placing the treatise in historical and historiographical contexts, suggesting a Shah Isma‘il centered historiographical revival in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Panel 55: Beyond Auteurs: A Study of Genre Development in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema

• Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi University of Toronto, Canada
• Taraneh Dadar Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK
  Melodramatic Travails: Gender and Genre in the Post-Revolutionary Cinema
• Nacim Pak-Shiraz University of Edinburgh, UK
  Comedy in Iranian Cinema
• Maryam Ghorbankarimi University of Edinburgh, UK
  Islam in Motion: Religious Adaptation in Iranian Cinema

Panel 56: Iran in Late Antiquity (II): Literary, Cultural, Historical, & Linguistic Continuities, Discontinuities, and Adaptations

• Sepideh Khaksar Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
• Haila Manteghi Amin University of Exeter, UK
  Is the Manuscript of Nihāya (Pseudo-Asmaí) Based on the Lost Translation of Xwadāy-nāmag of Ibn al-Muqaffa?
• Kaveh Bassiri University of Arkansas, United States
  Hybridity and the Making of Persian Poetry in the Abbasid Era
• Conrad Harter University of California, Irvine, United States
  Narrative and Iranian Identity in the New Persian Renaissance
• Abolghasem Dadvar Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Iran's Musical Objects and Compositions: From Prehistoric to Sasanian Times, with Consideration of Archeological Observations show abstract

  This paper is going to introduce different kinds of musical instruments(such as wind, string and percussion) from pre-Islamic Iran, the aim of the article is to present all information which are given in discovered objects from archeological excavations by studying of their images and designs . Also it discusses about written literatures of different periods such as: Zariran's memoir,Viss and Ramin, letter of Tansser, Karname-ye Ardeshir-e Babakan, Moravej-o Zahab, Beihaghi's History,Shah-nama of Ferdowsi, and Greek literature such as Herodotus and Xenophon's works . This information analysis through studying of existing collection related to pre- Islamic period which include some data about, objects, instruments and pre-Islamic music of Iran.

Panel 57: Approaches to the Qurʾān in Contemporary Iran (I): Text

• Daryoush Mohammad Poor Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK
• Rainer Brunner Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France
  Modern Shī’ī Authors on the Question of the Authenticity of the Text of the Qurʾān (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries)
• Todd Lawson University of Toronto, Canada
  A Text within a Text within a Text within a Text: The Bāb's Commentary on the Sura of Joseph
• Aun Hasan Ali McGill University, Canada
  The Qurʾān and Contemporary Iranian Shī’ī Discourse on the Origins of Language

Panel 58: (P) Painting and Illustration in the Qajar Period

• Alireza Anisi Iran Cultural Heritage Organization, Tehran, Iran
• Mahtab Javid Islamic Azad University, Rasht, Iran
  The Continuation of Shiraz School's Tradition in the Dāvari Shāhnāma's Miniature Paintings: The Works of Aghā Lotfali Suratgar show abstract

  The focus of this paper is the paintings of Agha Lutf ‘Ali Suratgar- between A.H.1273/A.D.1857 and A.H.1280/A.D.1864- in one of the latest shahnameh manuscripts named Davari’s Shahnameh which was produced in Shiraz under Qajar epoch. It aimes to revive the principals of Shiraz tradition in the pictorial style of Suratgar’s paintings which are reviewed through comparative analysis with early examples of Shahnameh painting in Shiraz style . The examination of the paintings’ iconography reveals a remarkable similarity to the classical style of fourteenth century Shiraz shahnameh manuscripts, particularly that of A.H.730/A.D.1330 and A.H.731/A.D.1333- the earliest known dated volumes of shahnameh- which are considered to provide the foundations for Persian miniature painting . The main characteristics of Shiraz tradition which have survived during centuries and have been reflected in Suratgar’s paintings are : the emphasis on historical and epic scenes, close text-image relationship, simplified and symmetrical compositions, the application of most basic elements, large figures placed on the lower edge of the picture, and limited palette. It can be said that working in Shiraz, artists were provided with the same source of inspiration which results in profound commonalities not only in the style of painting but also in a particular interest in the Iranian national epic.It seems that the tradition of Shahnameh painting in Shiraz survived since the first half of the fourteenth century to the late nineteenth, in spite of numerous ups and downs, and was still committed to the same principles.
• Ali Boozari Art Lecturer, Tehran, Iran
  Mirzā Hasan Ibn Aghā Sayyid Mirzā Isfahāni, the Court and Public Painter of the Qājar Era
• Mohammad Azadi Independent Scholar, Iran
  Reverse Glass Painting of the Ascent of the Prophet to Heaven
• Orkideh Torabi University Lecturer, Tehran, Iran
  Master Sattār Tabrizi, the Eminent Illustrator of Lithographed Books

Panel 59: Wandering Stories in Persian Literature and Beyond

• Natalia Chalisova Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow, Russia
• Gabrielle van den Berg Leiden University, Netherlands
  Wandering Stories: Farigh-e Gilani's Book on the Heroic Feats of 'Ali
• Amara S. Elahi Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, UK
  Vis and Ramin and its Parallels in the East and in the West
• Firuza I. Abdullaeva University of Cambridge, UK
  Femme Fatale in Persian Literature and Beyond
• Victoria Kryukova Russian Academy of Sciences, St-Petersburg, Russia
  Babr-e Bayān in Iranian and Russian Mythology

Panel 60: Rural Iran and Modernization, Globalization, & Development — Anthropological Perspectives (I): Economy, Fertility and Health

• Erika Friedl Western Michigan University, United States
• Soheila Shahshahani Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
  From a Village Vantage Point: Oyun after a Revolution, a War and the Islamic Republic
• Bernard Hourcade Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France
  The Neglected Garden? The Economy of Rural Iran
• Amandine Lebugle-Mojdehi Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France
  The Integration of the Rural to the Urban World: The Fertility Decline in Rural Iran
• Mohammad Shahbazi Jackson State University, United States
  Niloofar Shiva Shahid Beheshti University, Iran
  From Rural Iran to Rural Mississippi: An Anthropological Approach to Understanding and Replicating the Health House Concept for Rural Populations in Two Nations

Panel 61: Electoral Politics in Iran: From Participation to Representation

• Setrag Manoukian McGill University, Canada
• Azim Fazlipour Sorbonne University, France
  Pursuit the Right: Women's Right to Vote in Iran's Political History
• Homa Hoodfar Concordia University, Canada
  Women and Party Politics in Iran: Re-Mapping the Political Landscape
• Mona Tajali Concordia University, Canada
  Women’s Quest for Political Representation: Female Politicians in Iran and Turkey
• Luciano Zaccara Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
  Iranian Majles Elections as Mechanisms of Elite Recruitment and Competition

(P) Literary Violence, Textual Identity, and Persian Modernist Writing (sponsored by Iran Nameh)

• M.R. Ghanoonparvar University of Texas at Austin, United States
• Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami New York University, United States
  Modernist Readings of Myths: Rhetorical Violence in Bijan Najdi’s “The Eve of the Slaying of Sohrab”
• Houra Yavari Columbia University, United States
  The Violence of Rhetoric
• Kamyar Abedi Osaka University, Japan
  Modern Persian Poetry and the Expression of Violence
• Hassan Merabedini University of Zanjan, Iran
  Persian Novel and the Language of Violence

Panel 63: Philanthropy and Iranian Studies: Iran Heritage Foundation, a Case Study (sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

• Vahid Alaghband Iran Heritage Foundation, London, UK

Panel 64: Being, Reality, and Meaning in the Fiction of Sadeq Hedayat

• Houman Sarshar Independent Scholar, United States
• Marta Simidchieva York University, Toronto, Canada
  In Search of ‘Alam-i Mithal: Hedayat’s The Blind Owl and the Persian Philosophical Tradition show abstract

  Focusing on the notion of 'alam-i mithal (Costello’s “ethereal world”) glimpses of which appear in Part I of Sadeq Hedayat’s novel The Blind Owl, the paper explores the possibility that it may be a reflection of the philosophy of Mulla Sadra (1572-1640), or of his predecessor Suhravardi (1154–1191), in whose works the term refers to an intermediary realm (Corbin’s mundus imaginalis or “imaginal world”) which exists alongside the material and spiritual worlds, and contains images not yet embedded in matter. It seems a plausible model for Hedayat’s alam-i mithal , which exists beyond time and place, and is inhabited by ghostly presences, replicated— crudely or with greater refinement—in reality and/or in art.
• Aaron Haley University of Washington, United States1
  Hedayat’s Gothic Sublime: Repetition and Imagery in The Blind Owl
• Homa Katouzian St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK
  The Blind Owl’s Precedents in Hedayat’s Psycho-fictions show abstract

  Sadeq Hedayat’s fictional works may be divided into four groups: romantic nationalist, critical realist, satire and psycho-fiction. The psycho-fictions are not quite the same as the traditional psychological fiction, but stories in which the psychology is unplanned and incidental. While the affinity among all of them can be easily observed, two of the earlier stories particularly anticipate The Blind Owl: ‘The Puppet behind the Curtain’ and ‘Three Drops of Blood’. There is however a basic difference between The Blind Owl and ‘Three Drops of Blood’, on the one hand, and all the rest of his works – including ‘The Puppet behind the Curtain’ - on the other: those two stories use modernist, more specifically surrealist, techniques, whereas all Hedayat’s works have been written in the critical realist style.

Panel 65: Approaches to the Qurʾān in Contemporary Iran (II): Society

• Alessandro Cancian Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK
• Maryam Rutner New York University, United States
  Nosrat Amin (1886-1983) on Gender and Family Relations
• Liyakat Takim McMaster University, Canada
  Qurʾān and the Rethinking of Tradition in Post-Revolutionary Iran
• Anna Vanzan Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM, Milan, Italy
  Reading the Qurʾān through Gender Lenses: a Contribution to a Gendered ʼIjtihād as Reflected in Iranian Women's Journals show abstract

  In Revolutionary Iran, some female theologists involved in a female-centered reading of the Qur'an have been sharing their endeavors with the lay public by publishing them in journals. By opening an open forum for discussing issues traditionally monopolized by the 'ulama, Iranian female periodicals not only favored a gender-sensitive approach to the Qur'an, but also increased a general need and willingness to approach the holy text for a new and more responsible reading.

Panel 66: (P) The Iranian Constitutional Revolution as a Turning Point in Iranian Literature, Drama, and Historiography

• Saeed Talajooy University of Cambridge, UK
• Hamid Amjad Nila Publications, Iran
  The Patterns of Modernity in Constitutionary Drama
• Javad Faal Alavi Dastaan-e Kootah journal, Iran
  The Constitutional Revolution and the Demise of Eloquent Mode of Narration

Panel 67: Ritual and Mythology in Zoroastrian Texts: New Perspectives in Avestan Studies

• Richard Foltz Concordia University, Canada
• Zohreh Zarshenas Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran
  An Old Story from Avesta to Shāhnāma
• Alberto Cantera University of Salamanca, Spain
  Toward a New Edition of the Avesta: Problems and Perspectives

Panel 68: The State and Elections in Post-Revolutionary Iran

• Juan Cole University of Michigan, United States
• Mehrzad Boroujerdi Syracuse University, US
  Cabinets and Ministers in Post-Revolutionary Iran
• Amir Moheet University of Hawaii, Manoa, United States
  Elite Fragmentation and the Paradox of Authoritarian Persistence in Iran
• Alireza Namvar Haghighi University of Toronto, Canada
  The Role of Grassroots Campaigning in Iran’s Presidential Elections

Panel 69: Non-Conformity, Marginality, and Trauma in the Islamic Republic of Iran

• Houchang Chehabi Boston University, United States
• Mina Yazdani Eastern Kentucky University, United States
  Denying al-Raj‘a while Remaining Shī‘ī
• Leyla Mostafavi University of Ottawa, Canada
  Strategies for Survival: The Shaykhis of Kerman since the 1979 Iranian Revolution show abstract

  The Sheikhi movement and its subsequent geographic and scriptural divisions, one of which leads to present day Kerman, has been the subject of modest research. This deficiency in knowledge is amplified when investigating the contemporary beliefs, strategies of survival, and religious principles of the Sheikhi’s in Kerman, Iran. Considering this gap in knowledge, the subject of this paper is an analysis of the present day practices and beliefs of Shekhi’s of Kerman. This paper looks at the ways in which the Sheikhi’s have continued to differentiate themselves from the Usuli majority since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the transformation of their survival strategy vis-à-vis the state. The question this paper seeks to answer is in what ways have the broader socio-political changes taking places within the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979 have altered the beliefs and survival strategies of the Sheikhi community. The two general categories of survival, spanning the lifetime of the movement, have been quietism and/or messianic tendencies. This paper argues that the former strategy of quietism appears to be at work within the Sheikhi community since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The result of this strategy for survival has been a growing conservatism within Sheikhi beliefs and social relations, which this paper seeks to explain and outline. My research for this paper includes a rare personal interview with Sarkar Agha, the spiritual leader of the Sheikhi’s of Kerman, and personal interviews with various members of the Sheikhi community in both Iran and the diaspora.

Panel 70: The Culture of Russo-Iranian Relations from the Early 19th Century to the Present (I)

• Roham Alvandi London School of Economics, UK
• Maziar Behrooz San Francisco State University, United States
  From Golestan to Turkmanchai: Diplomacy and Intrigue in Russo-Iranian Relations 1813-1828
• Stephanie Cronin St Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK
  Deserters, Converts, Cossacks and Revolutionaries: Russians in Iranian Military Service 1800-1920
• Moritz Deutschmann European University Institute, Florence, Italy
  Local Dynamics of Russia's Borders with Iran in the Late Nineteenth Century

Panel 71: Sociolinguistics of Persian Language in Iran

• Zohreh Eslami Texas A&M University, US
• Abbass Eslami-Rasekh University of Isfahan, Iran
  Politeness in Persian: The East and West Divide
• Azizullah Mirzaei Shahrekord University, Iran
  Sociolinguistic Variability in Iranian Wedding Discourse
• Hamid Allami Yazd University, Iran
  Women as Guardians of Language Politeness: A Review of Sociolinguistic Studies on Politeness in Persian

Panel 72: The Making of Social Identities in the Iranian Oil Industry

• Touraj Atabaki International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Maral Jefroudi International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  Class and Other Identities in the Iranian Oil Industry
• Mohammad Maljoo Independent Scholar, Iran
  The Political Agency of the Iranian Oil Labour Force Since 1990s
• Peyman Jafari International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  The Politics of Production: Labor, State and Capital in the Iranian Oil Industry

Panel 73: Iconography, Illustration, and Cultural and Religious (Cross-)Referentiality (Thirteenth to Eighteenth Century)

• Zahra Faridany-AkhavanIndependent Scholar, Paris, France
• Sara Kuehn Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
  “Being Held in the Dragon’s Maw”: Toward the “Delivering” and “Devouring” Aspect of the Dragon Iconography in Eastern Iran, the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia/Jazira from the 10th to the 13th Century
• Raya Shani Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
  Some Further Comments on the Late-15th Century Illustrated Copy of Ibn Ħusâm's Khâvarân-nâma in the Gulistan Palace Library in Tehran (Ms. 5750)
• Lale Uluc Bogazici University, Turkey
  A Comparative Glance at the Ottoman and Safavid Court Workshops for the Arts of the Book: The Nakkashkhana versus the Kitabkhana

Panel 74: Saintly Figures and Sacred Spaces: Constructing Place, Community and Empire in Persianate Societies

• Maria Subtelny University of Toronto, Canada
• Rosemary Stanfield-Johnson University of Minnesota, Duluth, United States
  Husnīya: A Female Mujtahid in the Caliph's Majlīs
• Kishwar Rizvi Yale University, United States
  Lives of the Imams, Images of the Shah: Shī’īsm and Early Safavid Painting in Iran
• John Dechant Indiana University, United States
  Zayn al-Dīn Taybādī and the Construction of Sacred Space in Khurāsān
• Jo-Ann Gross College of New Jersey, United States
  The Tales and Genealogical Traditions of Sayyid Shāh Khāmush and the Creation of Sacred Identity show abstract

  This paper explores the tales and genealogical traditions of the traveler-missionary and foundational figure, Sayyid Mīr Hasan Khamosh (known as Shah Khamosh) who, according to local traditions from Badakhshan in present-day Tajikistan, conquered the "fire-worshipping rulers" of Shughnan in the twelfth century, brought Islam (Isma'ilism) to the region, and became the primordial ancestor of the Shahs of Shughnan who ruled there until 1883. Based on archival and field research and using local histories, traveler literature, oral narratives and genealogies, we will discuss how Shah Khamosh's sacred identity has formed over time and what significance it has for the history of Isma'ilism in the Pamir, and how his memory remains part of the sacred landscape through his mazar which is located in the village of Langar in Mu'minabad, Tajikistan.

Panel 75: “Flowers of Persian Song and Music”: the Golha Digitization Project (sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

• Jane Lewisohn School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
  The Golha Project, 2006-2012, and the Searchable, Relational Database of the Golhā Website
• Leonard Lewisohn University of Exeter, UK
  The Monumental Web-based Encyclopædia of Persian Poetry and Music: the Impact of the Golhā Website on the Study of Persian Poetry
• Alireza Miralinaghi Independent Scholar, Iran
  The Influence of the Golhā Programs on the Development of Twentieth-Century Classical Persian Music (Persian-language presentation)
• Golhā Website Film

Panel 76: Encounters in Imperial Borderlands: History and Historiographies of the Ottoman Empire and Iran

• Linda Darling University of Arizona, United States
  Iran’s Western Frontier in Anatolia and the Rise of the Ottoman Empire
• Rudi Matthee University of Delaware, United States
  The Ottoman-Safavid War of 986-993/1578-1585
• Sabri Ates Southern Methodist University, United States
  1639: a Founding Myth, a Founding Document
• Fariba Zarinebaf University of California, Riverside, United States
  Empires, Borderlands and Encounters: Evliya Çelebi and Durri Efendi in Iran

Panel 77: Cities & People: Urban Spaces, Cultures, and Daily Lives

• Dariush Borbor Architect and Urban Planner, Tehran, Iran
• Kamran Safamanesh Architect, Tehran, Iran
  The Grand Plan for Tehran in the Era of the First Pahlavi
• Nader Sayadi Islamic Azad University, Tehran-Qarb, Iran
  Kashan’s Sharbafi and Manufacturing in Central Iran
• Samar Saremi Université de Montréal, Canada
  Sacrality Configured: Reconstruction of the Imam Reza Shrine, Iran

Panel 78: (P) Local History, Historiography, and Historical Sociology in Modern Iran

• Mohammad Salmasizadeh University of Tabriz, Iran
• Hossein Rohani Islamic Azad University, Shahr-e Rey, Iran
  An Analysis of Local History Subject Matters Derived from Oral History Collections
• Abolfazl Hassanabadi Astan-e Qods-e Razavi Library, Iran
  Local History Components in Contemporary Iranian Historiography, 1925-2001
• Aref Vakili University of Tehran, Iran
  The Emerging Historical Sociology among Resident Sociologists in Iran

Panel 79: 'Abd al-Rahmān Jāmī: Man of Letters, Mystic and Associate of Rulers

• Paul E. Losensky Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
• Vika R. Gardner Allegheny College, United States
  Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in the Bahāristān of Jāmī: Deducing ‘Proper’ Men and Women show abstract

  “Childhood studies”, a field in European history, is largely unknown in Islamic studies. Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 1492), author of Bahāristān, wrote the work the educate his son. Although it is doubtful that he intended to address constructions of masculinity and sexuality in the work explicitly, we may read across the text to draw out the implicit messages about masculinity and sexuality represented there. This article presents a single literary text as an individual data point for how we might begin to read such a text for information on these topics.
• Sajjad H. Rizvi University of Exeter, UK
  Before the Safavid-Ottoman Conflict: Jāmī and Sectarianism in Timurid Iran and Iraq
• Ertuǧrul Ökten Sabanci University, Turkey
  'Abd al-Rahmān Jāmī and Philosophy of Language
• Chad G. Lingwood Grand Valley State University, United States
  A New Terminus a quo for Jāmī's Salāmān va Absāl show abstract

  This paper seeks to demonstrate that the terminus a quo of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s Salāmān va Absāl is later than commonly understood. In order to substantiate this claim, evidence will be presented to suggest that Jāmī addressed the poem to Sulṭān Yaʿqūb b. Ūzūn Ḥasan, leader of the Āq Qoyūnlū, in order to commemorate the ruler’s repentance for immoral acts in 893/1488. In recognizing the tale’s historical symbolism, the paper concludes that the traditional chronology of Jāmī’s Haft aurang, which situates Salāmān va Absāl second among its heptad of poems, is no longer tenable. The paper proposes a new chronological sequence, which locates the poem as the sixth and thus penultimate composition in Jāmī’s corpus of long masnavīs.

Panel 80: Literary Illustration and Calligraphy (Fifteenth to Seventeenth Century)

• Markus Ritter University of Zurich, Switzerland
• Lamia Balafrej Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France
  Bouquets of Verse from the Bustân of Sa‘dî
• Roxana Zenhari George August Univesity, Göttingen, Germany
  The Concepts and Images in Samak-e ʿayyār Romance
• Pegah Shahbaz University of Strasbourg, France
  The Iconography of Representations of the Scene of "Shirin Taking Her Bath in the Lake" in Topkapi Manuscripts
• Ayse Aldemir Kilercik Sabanci University Sakip Sabanci Museum, Turkey
  An Illustrated Copy of Gazavatname from Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul

(P) Women Writing Fiction in Iran (workshop)

• Ludmila Yaneva Sofia University, Bulgaria
• Mojdeh Daghighi
• Farkhondeh AghaiAuthor, Iran
• Behnaz GaskariAuthor, Iran
• Nahid TabatabaiAuthor, Iran

Panel 82: Rural Iran and Modernization, Globalization, & Development — Anthropological Perspectives (II): Cultural Heritage, Ideology and Politics

• Shahnaz R. Nadjmabadi Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany
• Sekandar Amanolahi Shiraz University, Iran
  Socio-Cultural Changes in a Village in Luristan, Southwest Iran
• Lois Beck Washington University, US
  Changes in Textile Production among the Qashqa’i of Iran
• Erika Friedl Western Michigan University, United States
  Progress as Ideology: Contents and Discontents in Rural Iran
• Mary Elaine Hegland Santa Clara University, United States
  Political Relations in Aliabad of Shiraz: From Taifeh (Kinship-based Political Factions) and Hierarchical to More Egalitarian and Individualistic

Panel 83: Prospects and Limitations of Iran’s Foreign Policy: Perspectives from Turkey

• Gokhan Cetinsaya President of the Council of Higher Education, Turkey
• Aylin S. Gorener Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey
  Balancing versus Bandwagoning: What to Make of Turkey’s Improved Relations with Iran?
• Bilgehan Alagoz Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey
  Turkish-Iranian Relations in the Context of NATO’s Emergence in the Persian Gulf
• Emre Iseri Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey
  The Energy Geopolitics of Iran and Its Nuclear Impasse : Implications for Turkey’s Energy Security
• Oguz Dilek Çağ University, Turkey
  Iran’s Nuclear Program and Security Dilemmas: Is it indeed in the Best Interest of Iran?

Panel 84: Contested Representations of “Identity” in Film and Cyberspace

• Ellen A. Herda University of San Francisco, United States
• Khatereh Sheibani University of Guelph, Canada
  Stars, Spirituality and Authorship in Iranian Cinema
• Fakhri Haghani Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, United States
  Making Films About/By Women: A New Mode of Looking At/For Activism in Iran
• Sanaz Raji University of Leeds, UK
  The Culture of Shame, Satirizing the Shame: "Persian Dad" Viral Videos, FOBs and Masculinity in the Iranian Diaspora
• Erfan Sabeti Lancaster University, UK
  Religious Cyber-Wars in the Global Age: A Case Study of Persian-Language Bahā’ī and anti-Bahā’ī Websites

AIS Board Meeting

AIS General Meeting

Panel 85: Personae, Poetics and Hermeneutics: Rhetorical Dynamics in the Persian Literary Tradition

• Ferenc Csirkés University of Chicago, United States
• Austin O'Malley University of Chicago, United States
  Mothers, Sisters, Wives and Old Crones: Sex, Gender and Archetypal Female Characters in Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār's Taẕkirāt al-Awliyā
• Franklin Lewis University of Chicago, United States
  The Rise and Fall of Sincerity in Persian Poetry
• Jane Mikkelson University of Chicago, United States
  Mutatis Mutandis: Silence in the Persian Ghazal

Panel 86: The Culture of Russo-Iranian Relations from the Early 19th Century to the Present (II)

• Jennifer Jenkins University of Toronto, Canada
• Elena Andreeva Virginia Military Institute, United States
  Iran in the Photographs of Dmitrii Ermakov (1845-1916)
• Svetlana Ravandi-Fadai Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow, Russia
  Touraj Atabaki International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  The Stalinist Great Terror and the Iranian Community of the USSR
• Elena Dunaeva Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow, Russia
  Current Cultural Relations between Russia and Iran: Problems and Prospects

Panel 87: (P) Prosody, Translation, and Language Learning

• Farhad Divsalar Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran
• Leila Ziamajidi Asr Gooyesh Pardaz, Tehran, Iran
  An Analysis of the Prosodic Elements of Shahriyar’s Turkish Poems
• Mohsen Rahimi Payam-e Noor University, Iran
  Evaluation of the Accuracy Level of Mechanical Translations into Persian Language
• Fateme Bayat Payam-e Noor University, Iran
  The Effects of Persian as a Native Language on the Learning of Possessive Adjectives and Pronouns of English as a Foreign Language on the Basis of Contrastive Analysis

Panel 88: Gender, Rights, and Political Conflict in Contemporary Iran

• Azar Tashakor Independent Scholar, Iran
• Victoria Tahmasebi University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada
  The Dialectics of Gender in Post-Revolutionary Iran
• Shirin Saeidi University of Cambridge, UK
  Gender and Post-Revolutionary Iran: Configuring Feminist Approaches for Examining the Warring State
• Shahla Talebi Arizona State University, US
  A Gendered Story of the Recent Conflicts in Iran

Panel 89: Armed Forces and State Hegemony in the Islamic Republic of Iran: War, Mobilization, Memory, Mourning, and Contestation of Power

• Navid Pourmokhtari Yakhdani University of Alberta, Canada
• Abdolreza Alamdar Baghini University of London, UK
  Victimhood, Identity and Politics of Memory: Formation of Victim Identity and its Effects on Socio-political Conflicts in Iranian Society
• Amin Palangi Australian National University, Australia
  Rahyane Nour: Sites of War as Sites of Holy Pilgrimage
• Bayram Sinkaya Middle East Technical University, Turkey
  The Revolutionary Guards and the Ahmadinejad Government: Rise of the Symbiotic Relationship and its Implications

Panel 90: The Politics of Iran’s Domestic Economy and Global Economic Relations

• Farian Sabahi University of Turin, Italy
• Hadi Esfahani University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US
  Iran and the Global Economy
• Esfandyar Batmanghelidj Columbia University, United States
  Sanctions, Smuggling and the Cigarette: The Granting of Iran OFAC Licenses to Big Tobacco

Panel 91: Gender, Sexuality, and Literature since the Nineteenth Century

• Dominic Brookshaw Stanford University, United States
• Ali Mir-Ansari Center for the Great Encyclopaedia of Islam, Tehran, Iran
  The Writings of Taj-Mah Afaq al-Dawlah: Poetry and Prose
• Sahar Allamezade-Jones University of Maryland, United States
  ‘Eshqi’s Ideal Woman: A Study of the Representation of Women in “Kafan-e Siyah,” (The Black Shroud) and “Seh Tablow (The Three Tableaux)
• Ana Ghoreishian University of Arizona, United States
  Exhuming the Erotic: A New Critical Look at the Erotic Poetry of Iraj Mirza Jalal al-Mamalek

Panel 92: Empowerment and Marginality in Early 20th–Century Public and National Spheres and Discourses

• Heidi Walcher School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
• Negin Nabavi Montclair State University, United States
  Coffeehouses and the Emergence of Public Space in Early Twentieth Century Iran show abstract

  The Constitutional Revolution in the early part of the twentieth century is considered to have been one of the three critical moments in modern Iranian history, alongside the 1951-1953 oil nationalization movement and the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Not surprisingly, therefore, the constitutional revolution has attracted much scholarly attention with many works published on it. However, amidst all that has been written on the constitutional era, rarely have studies considered the development of this period as constituting an emerging public sphere where a broader public could interact and discuss issues of common and shared concern more effectively. This paper focuses on this understudied aspect of the constitutional period, and explore the ways in which the constitutional experiment laid the grounds for various kinds of public space to develop on the one hand, and on the other, to explore the changes that it brought about in the function of different urban spaces. More specifically, this paper will consider the case of the coffee-house, a space other than the tavern and the mosque which served as a gathering-place primarily for men, and which is thought to have been in existence since the Safavid period. Building on the pioneering study of coffee-houses by Rudi Matthee, and making use of constitutional newspapers, travelogues, memoirs, and police records, this paper will discuss the changing functions of coffee-houses at the time of the constitutional movement. It will, more specifically, consider the kind of place that coffeehouses had become by the early twentieth century, and speculate on how the excitement of the constitutional movement and changing times may have contributed to both the activities within the coffeehouse as well as the kind of people who frequented them.
• Beeta Baghoolizadeh University of Texas at Austin, United States
  Women’s Education in the Early Twentieth Century Press show abstract

  This paper discusses the portrayal of women in the constitutional press. Using Rūznāmah-ʼi Qānūn, Ṣūr-i Isrāfīl, and Dānish as examples of the Iranian press, this paper identifies two distinct approaches to women’s education. Qānūn and Ṣūr-i Isrāfīl, liberal newspapers from the constitutional period, were written by men and intended for the male elite. Dānish, a paper run by women, presented women’s education as crucial for running an efficient household and avoided rhetoric aimed at the society at large. By comparing these newspapers, this study uses women’s education as a means to examine how journalists of the constitutional press handled discussions of European society and lifestyle, especially in relation to women’s rights.
• Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi California State University, Fullerton, United States
  The Tarbiyat Girls’ School of Tehran: Cultivating a Bahā’ī, American, or Nationalist Iranian Education?

Panel 93: Ancient and Middle Persian Languages

• Khodadad Rezakhani London School of Economics, UK
• Mostafa Younesie Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
  Comparative Exploration of the Verb “Be” in Ancient Iranian Greek Inscriptions
• Helen Giunashvili G. Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies, Georgia
  Studies on Pahlavi Syntax

Panel 94: Identifying Persian Culture in Anatolia under Achaemenid Rule (I) (sponsored by the Soudavar Foundation)

• Christopher Tuplin University of Liverpool, UK
• C. Brian Rose University of Pennsylvania, US
  Achaemenid Gordion
• Vasilica Lungu Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bucharest, Romania
  Pierre Dupont and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Lyon, France
  Achaemenid Cups: Questions of Production and Distribution
• Askold Ivantchik Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France
  Arrowheads: Tracks of the Achaemenid Army?

Panel 94: Zoroastrian Traces, Motifs, and Inspirations: Folk Religion, Folk Culture, and Revivalism

• Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis The British Museum, London, UK
• Shervin Farridnejad Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  On the Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism of Zoroastrian Iconography in Sasanian Iran
• Mehmet Alici Istanbul University, Turkey
  A Non-Zoroastrian Nowruz Celebration: The Anatolian Nevruz Feast show abstract

  As an ancient-rooted and a living spring-new year festival, Nowruz has influenced all nations and religious traditions that had encountered the Iranian plateau and were neighbors of the Iranian plateau. In this study, I will deal with the similarities and differences between the Zoroastrian-based Nowruz and the non-Zoroastrian Anatolian Nowruz feast. The main idea is to demonstrate the impact and influence of Zoroastrian-Iranian Nowruz on Anatolian communities and to uncover roots of Nowruz which has varied influence on all Anatolian communities, especially Kurds and Zazas moreso than Turks. Additionally, this paper tries to clarify how Nowruz become a non-Zoroastrian festival and to debunk claims that Nowruz is an ancient Turkic spring feast, not to dedicate Anatolian Nowruz to Turks. Every community or ethnicity relates to Nowruz using different concerns in Anatolia. For instance, Turkic tribes that had emigrated from Central Asia to Anatolia interestingly related the Nowruz feast to their origin myth. According to that myth, they were secluded in the Ergenekon area and they had tried to melt the iron mountain. Whenever they had saved themselves, the time of salvation had become a commemorative day. Meanwhile, this day coincided with the first day of the spring season and was celebrated as a New Year and salvation day. Instead of that, they have surprisingly called this feast as Nowruz. Moreover, they embraced Nowruz and claimed it as a Turkic feast. After the Islamizing of Anatolia, especially under Ottoman rule, Nowruz had been celebrated as a semi-official feast and the spring feast had been, and still is, called ‘Nowruz’ in various dialects, such as Sultani Nevruz, Navrez, Navsarız, Mevris, Gulnavriz and so on. Nowruz is celebrated in the Anatolian lands as a non-Zoroastrian festival. However, it has a deeply interesting relationship with the Zoroastrian Nowruz. It will be demonstrated how Nowruz has became as a non-Zoroastrian celebration in Anatolia giving examples such as the table of seven symbolic foods or ‘Haft-Sin,’ the germination of plants bringing to mind the rebirth of nature in Zoroastrian tradition and so on. Historically, Nowruz had been celebrated by Kurds, Turcomans and other communities that have lived in Anatolia. However, Anatolian Nowruz has been celebrated semi-officially and has been alleged as a Turkic feast in recent decades. They have forged on anvil to represent the mythical salvation. Therefore this study will deal with the transformation period of Nowruz from being a cultural celebration to its turn into a legal, official festival.
• Richard Foltz Concordia University, Canada
  Contemporary Neo-Zoroastrianism: Revival or Reaction?

Panel 95: Bābī and Bahā’ī Studies

• Todd Lawson University of Toronto, Canada
• Stephen Lambden University of California, Merced, United States
  The Tafsir Sura Yusuf-Qayyūm al-Asmā’ of the Bāb as the Kitāb al-Ḥusayniyya show abstract

  The first major writing of Sayyid `Alī Muhammad Shirazi, the Bāb (d. 1850 CE), dating from mid. 1844 CE., was a several hundred page, neo-Qur’ānic Arabic text variously known as the Tafsīr Sūra Yūsuf (`Commentary on the Surah of Joseph’, Q.12), the Qayyūm al-asmā’ (Self-Subsisting [Deity] of the [Divine] Names) as well as the Kitāb al-Ḥusayniyya. This work expresses something of the intertextual centrality of the messianic figure of the occulted, soon to “return” third Imam Ḥusayn (d. 61/680). He is the eschatological type of the Biblical-Qur’ānic Joseph. In this paper, aspects of the Bāb’s own messianic, Ḥusaynid persona will be sketched and analyzed in the light of Ḥusayn-related themes and motifs in his complex, multi-faceted, early baṭīnī (“esoteric“) Tafsīr work.
• Armin Eschraghi Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
  The King and the Mahdi: the Bāb's Views on Political and Religious Authority
• Moojan Momen Independent Scholar, UK
  Who was a Bahā’ī in Qajar Iran?
• Siyamak Zabihi-Moghaddam Independent Scholar, Israel
  The Massacre of Bahā’īs in Yazd in 1903 show abstract

  The massacre of the Baha’is in and around the town of Yazd in 1903 was one of the most severe incidents of religious persecution and mob violence in recent Iranian history. In the course of five weeks, close to a 100 Baha’is were brutally murdered. In spite of its significance, the episode has largely been ignored by scholars. The existing literature emphasizes the role of the Shi‘i clergy as the instigators of the massacre. This study focuses on the role played by Zill al-Sultan, the governor of Isfahan and father of Jalal al-Dawlih, the governor of Yazd. It argues that he had a vested interest in the crisis and that he deliberately took steps which prolonged its duration.

Panel 96: Sources in Safavid Studies (II): Art and Craft

• Sussan Babaie The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK
• Michael Chagnon New York University, United States
  “Cloath’d in Several Modes”: Ethnic Description in Later Safavid Painting
• Amy Landau Johns Hopkins University, United States
  Armenian Textual Sources for the Study of Seventeenth-Century Safavid Art and Architecture
• Jake Benson Curator, Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation and Dar al-Kutub Manuscript Project, Cairo, Egypt
  Naqsh Bar Āb: The Transfer of Paper Marbling Techniques between India, Iran and Turkey
• Aslihan Erkmen Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
  A Unique Illustrated Tazkira of Shaykh Safi al-Din at the Aga Khan Museum Collection

Panel 97: Identifying Persian Culture in Anatolia under Achaemenid Rule (II) (sponsored by the Soudavar Foundation)

• Christopher Tuplin University of Liverpool, UK
• Alexander von Kienlin Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland
  Hybrid Architectural Styles in Western Anatolia: A Persian Impact?
• Latife Summerer University of Munich, Germany
  Searching for Persian Tombs in Anatolia
• Frédéric Maffre University of Bordeaux, France
  Cities and Coins: Tracing the Iranians in Western Asia Minor
• Abolala Soudavar Independent Scholar, United States
  Mithraic Societies: The Lasting Impact of Cyrus’ Conquest of Asia Minor show abstract

  Recent studies have favored a theory by which Mithraic societies in the Roman world are considered as homegrown and independent of any Iranian counterpart. I have tried to prove the contrary. In this presentation, I shall try to show that the starting point of these societies in Anatolia was Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia. I shall then show how these societies went underground to eventually re-emerge under the Romans in a form that was much opposed to the orthodox Zoroastrianism that prevailed in Iran. Their reemergence necessitated a sanitization process that allowed them to survive in a new political and religious environment. Most interestingly, one can trace down these societies to their Anatolian avatars and compare them to their Iranian counterparts.

Panel 98: Women, Power, Sexuality, Religion, and Desire in Contemporary Iran

• Nayereh Tohidi California State University, Northridge, United States
• Sharare Shahrokhi San Jose State University, United States
  Iranian Feminists: Theoretical Challenges
• Suzanne Levi-Sanchez Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, United States
  Iranian Women: Movements, Marriages and Bodies
• Fatemeh Masjedi Zentrum Moderner Orient, Germany
  Female Religious Leaders in Qom
• Tahereh Aghdasifar Emory University, United States
  Repressive Liberation: Iranian Female Desire and U.S. Sexual Exceptionalism

Panel 99: The Mathnawī of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

• Roxane Haag-Higuchi University of Bamberg, Germany
• Alan Williams University of Manchester, UK
  Mowlavi's Mystical Poetics in the Mathnawī
• Sahba Shayani University of California, Los Angeles, United States
  A Key to the Sublime: An Analysis of Khwāb in Rūmī’s Mathnawī -i Ma'navī
• Maryam Hoseini Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Archetypal Patterns in Mathnawī’s Stories: the Cases of “The King and the Slave Girl,” “The Story of a Prince to whom the Real Kingdom Displayed itself,” and “The King who Liked his Three Sons”
• Eliza Tasbihi Concordia University, Canada
  Unity in Multiplicity: The Story of Daqúqi in Rūmī’s Mathnawī show abstract

  One of the enigmatic tales in the Mathnawi is that of Daquqi (III: 1878 – 2305). This tale describes the latter’s encounter with the seven abdaal. The present paper will explore the spiritual journey of Daquqi, who spends most of his life looking for the hidden friends of God, eventually meets them and then loses them again by making an inappropriate supplication in his thoughts during the prayer. Through the encounter of the One (Daquqi) and the Multiple (the seven abdaals or hidden friends of God), Rumi tackles the notion of wahdat dar kidhrat Unity in Multiplicity. Looking at how Rumi understands wonders “aja‘ib” in regard to the spiritual journey, I aim at examining the symbol and metaphor of wonders, which appears in the form of numbers, and natural elements in the story of Daquqi.

Panel 100: Borderlands, Encounters, Genealogies: Historical Sources and (Thirteenth to Sixteenth Century)

• Evrim Binbaş Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
• Ayfer Karakaya-Stump College of William and Mary, United States
  The Making of the Qizilbash in Ottoman Anatolia According to Newly Discovered Qizilbash/Alevi Sources
• Kazuo Morimoto University of Tokyo, Japan
  A Thirsty Market in the East: Ibn ‘Inaba and His Sayyid Genealogies show abstract

  This presentation examines the career of Ibn ʿInaba (d. 1424), the author of the most well-known sayyid genealogy ʿUmdat al-talib, and puts him in the contexts of the discipline of sayyid genealogies and the post-Mongol Persian historiography. How Ibn ʿInaba established himself as a specialist of sayyid genealogies in Iraq; how he sold his knowledge in Iran and Mawaraannahr; and how his works distinguished – or did not distinguish – themselves from previous works in the field are among the questions posed. Special attention will be paid to his Persian genealogies comprising the whole of humanity as they represent a juncture between the genre of sayyid genealogies and that of post-Mongol Persian universal-history writing.
• Florian Schwarz Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
  Borderland Histories: Writing and Re-Writing Chronicles in Sixteenth-Century Northwestern Iran

Panel 101: State and Society under the Pahlavis: From Re-Crafting History to Commemoration, Negotiation, and Dissent

• Ata Hoodashtian Management Institute of Canada, Montreal, Canada
• Parisa Zahiremami University of Toronto, Canada
  Iranian National Identity and the Ferdowsi Millennium Celebrations of 1934
• Serhan Afacan Leiden University, Netherlands
  Dialectics of State-Society Relations during the Reza Shah Period: Petitioning as a Way of Negotiation
• Katja Foellmer Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  Revival of the Past: (Re-)Construction of History in Twentieth-Century Modernizing Iran show abstract

  In 20th century Iran the question of the past as an ideal construction of religion, monarchy and society was intensively discussed in regard to the notion of Iran as a modern nation state. The paper will discuss the role of popular and intellectual communication and state propaganda in Iran in the Pahlavi era in relation to the (re-)construction of history. It will first give a brief review of the principles of the use of pre-Islamic Iranian past as a means of separation in the classical period up to Qajar rule. The conception of Iranian history and particularly the role of pre-Islamic heritage and religion will be discussed afterwards considering the idea of Iranian nation, the criticism of Islamic religion and media development in Pahlavi time.
• Mari Nukii Waseda University, Japan
  Organizations and Social Movements in the Tehran Bazaar after World War II

Panel 102: Comparative Approaches to the Modern Narrative Traditions of Iran and the Arab World

• Michael Beard University of North Dakota, US
  Amy Motlagh American University of Cairo, Egypt
• Amir Moosavi New York University, United States
  Martyrs & Martyrdom in Literature of the Iran-Iraq War and the Lebanese Civil War
• Hanan Hammad Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, United States
  From Orientalism to Khomeinism: Persian Studies in Egypt throughout the Twentieth Century
• Kamran Rastegar Tufts University, United States
  Comparative Modernities: Cultural "Rebirth" in Iran and the Arab World
• Guilan Siassi American University of Paris, France
  The Spectral Promise of Home: Encrypted Memories and Transgenerational Haunting in Shahrnush Parsipur and Assia Djebar

Panel 103: US-Iran Relations: National Narratives and Missed Opportunities

• Tuğrul Keskin Portland State University, United States
• John Tirman Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
  The US-Iran Relationship: National Narratives and Missed Opportunities—Introduction and Method
• Hussein Banai Brown University, United States
  Becoming Enemies: US-Iran Relations During the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988
• Malcolm Byrne George Washington University, United States
  New Evidence on the 1996 Khobar Towers Attack and its Impact on US-Iran Relations
• Mahsa Rouhi University of Cambridge, UK
  The Confrontation over Iran’s Nuclear Program, 2001-2012

Panel 104: Transnational Influences and Affinities and Nationalist and Modernist Trajectories in the Early Twentieth Century

• Farzin Vejdani University of Arizona, United States
• Evan Siegel Independent Scholar, United States
  Mullah Nasr od-Din between Iranism and Turanism
• Filiz Dığıroğlu Marmara University, Turkey
  A Contribution to the Ottoman Intellectual Life: Iranian Second Hand Booksellers, Typographers in Dersaadet
• Alexander Jabbari University of California, Irvine, United States
  Iran without India: Nationalism and the 'Indian Style' in Bahar's Sabkshenasi

Panel 105: Literary and Historical Authorship from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Century: Erudition, Authority, Patronage, and Self-Representation

• Christine van Ruymbeke University of Cambridge, UK
• Domenico Ingenito Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, UK
  The (Iranian) King's Two Bodies: Courtly Elegies against Biological Death
• Rachel Milstein Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
  The Voice of the Poet: Points of View in Persian Painting show abstract

  Literary theories of narratology teach us that various groups of rhetoric devices help the reader trace the identity of the person, whose point of view is expressed in any given part of the narrative. These points of view, named focalizors by contemporary critics, bring to light otherwise hidden levels in the literary work. In this paper I suggest that visual focalizors exist in Persian painting as well and that their presence lead the beholder to a more profound and enriching reading of the pictorial narrative. A prominent place in this poetic artifice is reserved to the image/voice of the author, who is sometimes disguised as a court musician. A representation of a poet in the guise of a singer is explicable in light of the description of court poets in Nizami-i'Arudi's Chahar Maqala. An example of such a poet-musician is the mythological singer Barbad, whose images indeed appear in illustrated Shah-nama manuscripts. Other, and even more telling cases, depict a member of the court reading aloud a written text or handing a manuscript to his royal patron. In certain double-page compositions, this poet/reader and his ruler are seen on one folio, the hero of the text on the facing folio. The double role of the poet as a spokesman of the ruler and as his critic often appears in illuminated frontispieces. In many other cases, however, the poet entrusts his point of view to other personae in, and around the scene, thus enabling the beholder to watch the episode from several points of view. Some of these points of views seem surprisingly subversive, especially when they contradict the message transmitted by other signifying systems, such as the composition. A good case-study of this poetic means is the recurrent depiction of royal courts, in which the hierarchy is emphasized by the composition; another point of view by the focalizor.
• Julia Rubanovich Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
  The Medieval Persian Author on Guard: In Defense of Authorship show abstract

  The extensive and carefully elaborated regulations specified by Rashid al- Din Fazl Allah (ca. 645-718/ca. 1247-1318) in a preface to one of his theological works, concerning the precautions to be taken for the sake of conservation and distribution of his rich literary-historical legacy, reveal a high degree of authorial self-consciousness in the second part of 7th/13th – early 8th/14th centuries. Rashid al-Din's vehement authorial attitude furnishes a vantage point for examining the rising awareness of medieval Persian litterateurs regarding the proprietary rights on their compositions from the inception of Neo-Persian literature in the first half of the 4th/10th century till the 7th/13th century. I hope to address the following cluster of questions in my paper: a) what are the “perils” faced by the medieval author while sending his composition to a free sail in the ocean of literature, in that he loses control over its circulation and possible modification? b) what are the means and devices that the medieval author might conceive of to guard his “progeny” of external menaces, thus promising his work the fortune that he had envisaged in the process of its composition? c) how does the author craft his authorial (and authoritative) relationship vis-à-vis his patron? d) how does the medieval author deal with a delicate issue of his own creative individuality versus the Creator? The examination of these questions will be carried out on the basis of authorial metanarrative statements, located mostly in dībāchas and khātimas to medieval compositions. I shall look into various literary genres, both prose and poetry, and shall make an effort to elucidate – albeit briefly - the evolvement of the concept of authorship in early medieval Persian literature.

Panel 106: Literary Criteria and Intertextuality in Modern Persian Literature

• Leila Pazargadi Nevada State College, United States
• Hamid Rezaeiyazdi University of Toronto, Canada
  Nation of Poets: A Study of the (Arrested) Development of Modern Iranian Novel
• Roxane Haag-Higuchi University of Bamberg, Germany
  The Medium is the Message: Story-Telling and Writing as a Subject of Intertextual Reference in Modern Persian Literature show abstract

  This paper focusses on Abu Torab Khosravi’s short story Divan-e Sumanat (2nd ed. 2001) and Hushang Golshiri’s short novel King of the Benighted (1990). Both works contain intertextual markers in their title and use devices of intertextuality as central means for the production of meaning. By scrutinizing the techniques of literary references employed in these texts, this paper tries to show that intertextuality is used as an instrument to discuss story telling and writing as the crumbling basis of Perisan culture.

Panel 107: (P) Gender, Transgression, Victimization, and Retribution

• Shahla Talebi Arizona State University, United States
• Shaghayegh Fathalizade Independent Scholar, Iran
  Prostitutes in the Qajar Era
• Mohsen Maljoo Independent Scholar, Iran
  Incestual Rape in Contemporary Iran

Panel 108: Post-9/11 US Foreign Policy toward Iran

• Mansoor Moaddel Eastern Michigan University, United States
• Tuğrul Keskin Portland State University, United States
  American Foreign Policy toward Iran and Turkey in the Post-September 11 Era: A Comparative Analysis of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran (Abadgaran) and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey
• Leila Piran George Washington University, United States
  Iranian-Americans' Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy: Transnational Advocacy or Nationalist Resurgence?

Panel 109: New Literary and Historical Perspectives on Bābī and Bahā’ī Communities in the Qajar Era

• Franklin Lewis University of Chicago, United States
• Alyssa Gabbay University of Washington, United States
  Prophecy, Poetry and the Legitimization of the Bābī Faith in Nineteenth-Century Iran show abstract

  This paper looks at the significance of poetry in the development and the legitimization of the Babi Faith in 19th-century Iran. Focusing on statements attributed to Sayyid Ali Muhammad (d. 1850), known as the Bab, it seeks to demonstrate how his interpretations of poems by Hafiz constituted both continuity of and rupture with Islamic tradition in a manner that resembles his readings of the Qur’an. These readings invariably point to the advent of a messianic figure identified with the Bab himself. Among the questions to be examined are: How does the Bab’s attitude toward poetry represent the adaptation of a new religion to the particular needs and temperament of a recipient country? How did poetry help legitimate the nascent faith?
• Mehrdad Amanat Independent Scholar, United States
  Bahā’ī Converts Memoirs: The Voice of the Subaltern
• Saghar Sadeghian University of Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, France
  Bast at the Russian Consulate of Isfahan, 1903: A Closer Study of the Event in Light of the Documents

Panel 110: Zoroastrian Traces, Motifs, and Inspirations: Folk Religion, Folk Culture, and Revivalism

• Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis The British Museum, London, UK
• Shervin Farridnejad Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  On the Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism of Zoroastrian Iconography in Sasanian Iran
• Mehmet Alici Istanbul University, Turkey
  A Non-Zoroastrian Nowruz Celebration: The Anatolian Nevruz Feast
• Richard Foltz Concordia University, Canada
  Contemporary Neo-Zoroastrianism: Revival or Reaction?

Panel 111: Friendship in Persianate Societies and Cultures: Forms, Practices and Significances

• Helmut Puff University of Michigan, United States
• Emma Flatt University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States
  “As Long as Men are Alive, Friends are Indispensible to Them”: Definitions of Friendship in Indo-Persian Prescriptive Literature
• Kathryn Babayan University of Michigan, United States
  The Unfolding of the Self/Friend in Early Modern Isfahan show abstract

  My paper investigates the diffusion of subjective forms of knowledge in early modern Isfahan, before print culture, through the circulation of friendship-letters and single-page paintings. As the Safavi imperial state extended its control into the hitherto lightly regulated sites of quotidian experience, Isfahan, experienced shifts in the ways friendship and desire were socially practiced. I see transformations in both epistolary practices and in the practices of friendship as parts of a “civilizing process” where books on conduct were mobilized to regulate desire. It is through this critical link between civility, friendship, and letter writing that I explore the unfolding of early modern subjectivities in Isfahan.
• Mana Kia Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
  Khān and Adīb: The Symbiosis of Power and Prestige show abstract

  Drawing on their own writings, as well as contemporaneous tazkerahs, this paper examines the mid-18th century friendship between “Faqir” Dehlavi and “Valeh” Daghestani, against the background of other such relationships between a powerful noble (khan) and learned man (adib) in Mughal India. For a khan, the prestige of companionship with the learned could negate the ethically dubious associations of military actions and political power. Symbiotically, tutelage of and patronage by powerful men could provide the adib the means of perfecting and spreading their knowledge. That this and many such relationships were undertaken by individuals originating in Iran and India challenges us to consider to what extent this idea of friendship, and the notions of ethical prestige and power it embodied, was part of a shared Persianate culture.

Panel 112: Isfahan and Beyond: Royal and Ordinary Lives in Cities from the Safavid to Early Qajar Periods

• Sholeh Quinn University of California, Merced, United States
• Yukako Goto Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan
  Safavid Subcenters and Their Functions
• Houri Berberian California State University, Long Beach, United States
  The Lives of Julfan Armenian Women and Early Modern Laws show abstract

  This study seeks to uncover the world of early modern Julfan women, unfathomed by European travelers and unexplored by scholars, through an analysis letters, petitions, and wills written or dictated by women in Julfan Armenian and a published lawcode in classical Armenian, compiled in the 1760s and used by the Armenian community in Astrakhan, Russia, where Julfans made up a significant portion of the Armenian population and relied on Julfan customary law. The sources point to a significant array of legal and economic rights and roles for women than our European observers could have imagined. Moreover, the many similarities between the Armenian laws and shari`a indicate obvious yet surprisingly little-studied connections or encounters between the two.
• Armin Yavari Independent Scholar, UK
  Paradise Regained: the Eclipse and Re-Ascent of Isfahan’s Fortunes, 1722-1825 show abstract

  Nowhere are the misfortunes of eighteenth century Iran more visibly inscribed than on the history of Esfahan. From the heady decadence of the Safavids through to the punishing struggle between the Zands and the Qajars, the city underwent a dramatic transformation, cast from thriving metropolis to monolithic ruin. That Esfahan descended not into the obscurity that claimed many of its predecessors, but revived and grew is owed in great measure to the intervention of two of its governors: Haji Mohammad Husayn Khan Sadr-Esfahani Nezam ed-Dauleh and his son, 'Abdallah Khan Amin ed-Dauleh. This paper introduces the architects of Esfahan's downfall, the principal disasters that befell it, and considers how the Sadr-Esfahanis led the subsequent renewal, redevelopment, and rebirth of the city.

Panel 113: European Documentation, Construction, and Reconstruction of Iran in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century: Analogies and Disparities

• Jennifer Jenkins University of Toronto, Canada
• Sibylle Wentker Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
  Persian History in the Eyes of 19th-Century European Historians: The Example of Austria show abstract

  Over time, Persian History has attracted many disciplines including Classical Philology, Archeology, Art History and General History. This paper explores the tendencies of historical writing about Persia in terms of style, periods discussed and embedded mindsets of 19th -century historians. The analysis focuses on the reknown Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856). Besides his important works on Persian poetry he wrote a History of the Il-Chans in Persia and translated the complex and ornate Tarikh-e Wassaf. By analysing Hammer-Purgstall’s commentaries, this paper will shed light on the prevailing scholarly tastes in Persian History of the period.
• Corien J.M. Vuurman Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen (HAN University), Netherlands
  Early European Photography of the Achaemenid Monuments in Persepolis
• Szántó Iván Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
  Imre Francsek (1891- 1952): An Architect in Early Pahlavi Iran show abstract

  In the wake of the Great Depression of 1929, many Central European engineers and architects were forced either to give up their profession or to restart their career in an environment less affected by the economic crisis. Experiencing a construction boom which was triggered by the newly-exploited oil revenues, Iran under its new and energetic Pahlavi dynasty became a desirable destination for many. Among the architects who made their fortune in Iran in the 1930s we find Imre Francsek, a Hungarian with a considerable, but completely forgotten, contribution to the architecture of his native land as well as Iran. As a newcomer he was forced to accept all commissions available; this explains his remarkable versatility. He was active in municipal and imperial enterprises, while at the same time he was also involved in private entrepreneurship. His output covers virtually all aspects of architecture ranging from civic buildings and refurbishments to administrative and industrial projects which he carried out in many corners of the country from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. Although for the most part he relied on local workforce, in many instances he employed his many fellow-countrymen who came to Iran about the same time. Based on archival material, this paper thus serves as a case study as much as the reconstruction of a particular career.

Panel 114: Myth and History in Iranian Theater: From Historical Page to National and International Stage

• Ali M. Ansari University of St. Andrews, UK
• Saeed Talajooy University of Cambridge, UK
  Theater as History: The Constitutional Revolution in Iranian Theater
• Proshot Kalami Loughborough University, UK
  Persia on the Stage: Interweaving of Palimpsestic Layers of Language and Identity in Beyzaie’s Theater
• S. Alexander Briggs Loughborough University, UK
  “Let Us Now Await the Verdict …”: Interweaving Performance Cultures through Bahram Beyzaie’s Death of Yazdgerd

Panel 115: Local Life, Agency, and the State in Rural Iran before and after the 1979 Revolution

• Yuko Suzuki-Monatte Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France
• Menahem Merhavy Tel Aviv University, Israel
  Rural Iran in Pahlavi Eyes: From Romanticism to Exoticism
• Linda K. Jacobs Independent Scholar, United States
  An American Archaeologist in an Iranian Village in the 1970s
• Eric Lob Princeton University, United States
  Jahad-e Sazandegi: From Inception to Merger (1979 - 2001)

Panel 116: Perspectives on Persian Art in Istanbul Collections (ILEX-sponsored panel)

• Olga M. Davidson Boston University, United States
• Sheila Canby The Metropolitan Museum, New York, United STates
  The Demimonde in Safavid Painting
• Charles Melville Cambridge University, UK
  The “Big Head” Shāhnāma and its Unique Features
• David Roxburgh Harvard University, United States
  Artistic Production in Herat, Shiraz, Tabriz and Baghdad: the 1450s and 1460s show abstract

  Art historians have understood the mid-1400s as a fulcrum in the history of art of the book and court patronage. The 1450s-60s were hardly ideal for artistic production: these decades witnessed rapid exchanges of territories, short regnal periods, assaults on centers of cultural production, all of which precipitated the movement of artists and calligraphers from one court to another and the dissemination of libraries. This paper examines the historical fulcrum, described vaguely as a “modified cultural continuity,” through the patron Pir Budaq (d. 1466), son of Jahanshah, and governor in Shiraz and then Baghdad. The paper presents manuscripts from his library and pieces together a picture of the formation of early Turkmen art of the book.
• Marianna Shreve Simpson President, Historians of Islamic Art Association, United STates
  In the Beginning: The Earliest Dated and Illustrated Shāhnāma of Ferdowsi (TSMK H.1479)
• Laura Weinstein Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, US
  Ottoman Form, Dakani Words: A Calligraphy Album from the Deccani Sultanate of Golconda

Panel 117: Religious Manifestations and Transformations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

• Riza Yildirim TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey
• Farida Stickel University of Zurich, Switzerland
  Converting Iran: Religious Policy under the Early Safavids
• Walter Posch German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Germany
  Sufi Path and Noble Lineage: Some Remarks on the Life of İbrahim Gülşeni
• Sarah Morrell Indiana University, United States
  Muhammad, Safi al-Din and the Eschaton: Visual Millenarianism in a Late 16th-Century Manuscript of the Safwat al-Safa
• Ata Anzali Rice University, United States
  Some Reflections on the Early Developments of the Dhahabiya Sufi Order

Panel 118: Education, Science, and Occult in the “Islamicate” World of Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century

• Lloyd Ridgeon University of Glasgow, UK
• Hadi Jorati Yale University, United States
  The Lost Legacy of Omar Khayyam's Mathematical Writings
• Kaveh Niazi Columbia University, United States
  Risāla-i Mu’īnīyya and al-Tadhkira fī ‘ilm al-Hay'a: A Comparative Study of the Chapters on the Configuration of Heavenly Bodies
• Mahdi Farhani Monfared Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Educational Development under the Timurids: A Comparative Inquiry into Samarqand and Herat
• Matthew Melvin-Koushki University of Oxford, UK
  Thinking a New Age: The Role of Occult Philosophy in Early Fifteenth Century Iran and Anatolia

Panel 119: Desire in the City: Exploring Shahrâshûb (Şehrâşûb) and Shahrangîz (Şehrengîz) in Poetry and Manuscript Illustration

• Sooyong Kim Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
• Dominic Brookshaw Stanford University, United States
  Shahrangîz Meets Shahrâshûb: Commonalities and Divergences in Two Early Sixteenth-Century Persian City-Disturber Panegyrics
• Selim Kuru University of Washington, United States
  Şehrengîz is Not Şehrâşûb: Trials and Tribulations of Two Genres in Two Languages
• Oya Pancaroglu Boğaziçi University, Turkey
  Market Conditions and the Settings of Love in the Romance of Varqa va Gulshâh
• George Dedes School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
  Lâmi'î’s Şehrengîz-i Borusâ: the Coming of Age of an Ottoman Genre?

Panel 120: Iran and Afghanistan in Twentieth-Century International Affairs

• Mary Yoshinari University of Toronto, Canada
• Eden Naby Independent Scholar, United States
  Iran’s Embassy in Istanbul and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919
• Solaiman Fazel Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
  Afghanistan’s Reformation Failure, 1919-1929: A Social and Political History
• Mikiya Koyagi University of Texas at Austin, United States
  The End of the Transnational Imagination of Easternism: The Irano-Japanese Relations, 1900-1945
• Pham Thi Thanh Huyen Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Iran’s Participation in the International Commission of Control and Supervision of the Vietnam Peace Accord, 1973-1975

Panel 121: Preserve, Archive, Digitize Art: Memory Issues in Iranian World

• Camille Perreand L'Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA), Afghanistan
• Liliane Anjo Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
  Capturing Scenes of Theater: An Insight on the Trends and Issues Raised by the Digital Recording of Dramatic Arts in Iran
• Nathalie Matti Paris 8 University, France
  The Internet Access to Iranian Audiovisual Archive’s Images and Its Effects on Actors’ Somatic Experience
• Ariane Zevaco Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
  Works on Old Music: In Pursuit of Authentic New Trends in Iran and Tajikistan
• Agnès Devictor Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, France
  Policies of Digitization of War Films in Iran and Afghanistan

Panel 122: Identity and the Creation of Identity: Sasanian Self-Characterization and the Creation of the Persianate World (sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

• Carlo Cereti Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
• Touraj Daryaee University of California, Irvine, United States
  From Oxus to Euphrates: Sasanians and the Creation of the Persianate Culture
• Khodadad Rezakhani London School of Economics, UK
  Iranian East and the Sasanian Kai: East Iranian Influences on the Sasanian Royal Identity
• Sara Mashayekh Independent Scholar, United States
  The Changing Identity of the Sasanian Monarchy
• Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis The British Museum, London, UK
  Dynastic Claim and Political Identity: From the Parthians to the Sasanians

Panel 123: The Shomal in Historical Perspective (Safavid Period)

• Rudi Matthee University of Delaware, United States
• Rula Abisaab McGill University, Canada
  The Safavid Shahs, the Mujtahids and Peasant Revolts in Astarabad
• Alberto Tiburcio McGill University, Canada
  Toward a Historiography of Plagues in Northern Iran
• Sinem Arcak University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, United States
  Picturing Conquest in the Ottoman-Safavid Wars (1578-1590)
• Nazak Birjandifar McGill University, Canada
  Religion in Gilan during the Safavid Period show abstract

  This paper discusses the religious conversion of the diverse religious groups in Gilan during the Safavid period. Once the Safavids came to power in the sixteenth century, they declared Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion of the state. This paper will look at how the mostly Zaidi Shi'ite and Sunni population of Gilan converted to the state-sponsored Twelver Shi'ism. The conversion of the Gilanis began with the conversion of their rulers, who despite their tendency to maintain a semiautonomous status under the Safavids, became the agents of change and conversion in the province. Eventually by the seventeenth century Twelver Shi‘ism supplanted Zaidism in Gilan.

Panel 124: Iran and Cultural Introspection of Identity in the Age of Globalization

• Hossein Mesbahian University of Tehran, Iran
• Simin Fasihi Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with “Identity” in the Qajar Era
• Soheila Torabi Farsani Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
  Iran’s Mercantile Encounter with “Identity” in the Pahlavi Era
• Sara Shariati University of Tehran, Iran
  Religion in Civil Spheres: A Case Study of the City of Tehran
• Mojtaba Mahdavi University of Alberta, Canada
  Post-Islamist Trends in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Contextualizing Identity Politics show abstract

  Today’s Iran under the Islamist state represents the most complex forms of post-Islamism in the Muslim world. The unintended consequences of the Islamic Republic have empowered and enlightened the public, transformed the people from subjects to citizens, and in effect have undermined the intellectual, political and social foundations of the Islamist state. Today’s Iran is on the brink of a “post-Islamist” turn, as the first post-Islamist civil society in the Middle East is in the making, underneath of the Islamic Republic. Over the past one and a half centuries, modern Iran has been a pioneer of progressive political changes in the Middle East, the home to the first constitutional revolution (1906–11), the first nationalist and parliamentary democratic movement in the post–World War II period (1950–53), and the first anti-despotic revolutionary change (1977–79). Iran is home to the first civic social movement in the Middle East, known as the Green Movement (2009–present). The past three historical democratic waves introduced Iran to the rule of law and constitutionalism, democratic nationalism, and anti-despotic revolutionary change with elements of an Islamic discourse. The current Green Movement is marked by a new historical era toward post-Islamism in Iran. Post-Islamism in post-revolutionary Iran signifies the paradoxes of the Islamist state. This paper examines the 'nature' and the 'diversity' of post- Islamist trends in the country. I first briefly 'conceptualize' and 'contextualize' post-Islamist discourses in Iran and then analyze the 'sociopolitical origins' of three trends of post-Islamism in postrevolutionary Iran: quasi/semi post-Islamism, liberal-post-Islamism, and neo-Shariati’s post-Islamist discourse. The conclusion/findings (based on fieldwork and context analysis) problematizes the fate and future of Iran’s post-Islamist trends in the context of identity politics.

Panel 125: Translating Modern Persian Poetry: Notes and Reflections on Current Work

• Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak University of Maryland, United States
• Daniel Rafinejad University of California, Los Angeles, United States
  Translating Akhavān-e Sāles’s “The Tale of the Petrified Kingdom”
• Samad Alavi University of California, Berkeley, United States
  Crystalline Words: Shafi‘i-Kadkani’s Socio-Spiritual Poetry in Translation
• Zuzanna Olszewska St. John’s College, University of Oxford, UK
  Translating Contemporary Afghan ‘Ghazal-e Now’

Evening Program: Dinner Cruise on the Bosphorus (Sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

Registered participants are required to sign for up this event on the first day of registration, as there are only 400 seats available. Transportation from the hotel to the cruise ship and back will be provided.