2016 Election

James M. Gustafson is a social and economic historian of modern Iran. He is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Indiana State University, a minority serving state institution in the American Midwest. Prof. Gustafson also served two terms as President of the Midwest Association for Middle East and Islamic Studies (2012-16). He received his Ph.D. in History at the University of Washington in 2010 and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago in 2005. His research interests center on the study of local histories and geographical literature in 18th and 19th century Iran. His recent articles include “Geographical Literature in Nineteenth-Century Iran” (JESHO, 2016), “Household Networks and Rural Integration in Qajar Kirman” (IJMES, 2014), “Qajar Ambitions in the Great Game: Notes on the Embassy of ‘Abbas Qoli Khan to the Amir of Bokhara, 1844” (Iranian Studies, 2013), and a number of articles in Encylcopaedia Iranica. In July 2015, he published his first book in the Routledge Iranian Studies series entitled Kirman and the Qajar Empire: Local Dimensions of Modernity in Iran. His current project, An Environmental History of Modern Iran, is expected in 2018.

Hani Khafipour completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago. He is a specialist in the history of medieval and early-modern Iran. His research encompasses study of the structures of political orders, theories of power and authority, sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. He teaches courses on Islamic political thought and theory; medieval and modern history of Iran and the Middle East; and comparative/connected histories of early modern societies under the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal rule. Khafipour has held research fellowships from the Iran Heritage Foundation (UK), and the American Institute of Iranian Studies. He was an Andrew W. Mellon fellow, and a fellow of the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. His recent research and teaching interest has culminated in an edited volume, Empires of the Near East and India: Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities, ed., H. Khafipour (forthcoming, Columbia University Press 2016), and a book, The Mantle of Authority in an Early Modern Society (under preparation). Khafipour is the current faculty advisor for USC's Middle East Studies Student Association. He currently teaches courses on Islamic political thought and theory; medieval and modern history of Iran and the Middle East; and comparative/connected histories of early modern societies under the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal rule at the University of Southern California--Los Angeles.

Following the completion of a doctorate in Persian language and Literature at the University of Tehran, Maryam Moazzen obtained another PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations from the University of Toronto in 2011. She is currently an assistant professor in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Department of Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville. In addition to presenting her research at a number of national and international conferences, she has published two articles: “Rituals of Commemoration, Rituals of Self-Invention: Safavid Religious Colleges and the Collective Memory of the Shi‘a,” in the Journal of Iranian Studies, and “Institutional Metamorphosis or Clerical Status Quo? New Insights into the Career and Work of Sayyid Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir Khātūnābādī,” in the Journal of Studia Iranica. She has also contributed to the forthcoming peer-reviewed collected studies volumes Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam and; Knowledge and Education in Classical Islam, and Empires of the Near East and India: Sources for the Study of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Societies. Her forthcoming book The Sacred Geography of Shi‘a Higher Learning in Safavid Iran: Mosques and Madrassas, will be published by E.J. Brill in their Islamic History and Civilization Series.

Maryam N. Sabbaghi is a PhD student in Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where she also received her master’s degree in 2013. Maryam focuses on medieval and early modern Persian literature, Safavid-Mughal history, and gender and sexuality in Islam. Maryam is proposing her dissertation on the life and work of the mystic princess Zīb al-Nisā Makhfī, exploring themes of eros, madness, and melancholia as well as issues of authorship, gender play, and voice in her poetic corpus. Maryam served as student coordinator for the Persian Circle at the University of Chicago and is a Writing Intern for the Humanities Core. She is also working towards a College Teaching Certificate at the Chicago Center for Teaching. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2010 with a B.A. Honors in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; Political Science; Law, Societies, and Justice. Maryam has also been nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize, the most honored annual literary anthology in America.

Saharnaz Samaeinejad is a Joseph-Armand-Bombardier CGS doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature, where she concentrates on aesthetic theory and literary criticism within the context of the late 19th- and 20th-century critical theory. Saharnaz received her B.A. in Sociology from Tehran University, and her M.A. in Individualized Studies from NYU. Her research interests focus on the historical transformation of the lyric-form and lyric subjectivity under the socio-political conditions of modernity, and she is primarily engaged with the critical potentials and temporal qualities of the poetics of lyric expressivity in Persian poetry during the mid-20th-century (with a special focus on the poetry of Furūgh Farrukhzād). In 2015, Saharnaz served as the executive member (the Northrop Frye Representative) of the Comparative Literature Student Union, and during her undergraduate, she served for two terms as a Student Council Representative (Shurā-i Sinfī-i Dānishjūyān) of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tehran University. She has also been involved in media practice and journalism, and her pieces and interviews have been featured in outlets including Iran-i Fardā, Chishm Andāz-i Iran, Khiradnāmah: Hamshahrī’s Theoretical Supplementary, Shargh Daily and Annual, Farhīkhtigān, Itemād Millī, and Rūzigār Newspaper, Krytyaka Polityzcna Magazine, CNN, and Democracy Now.