Stanford Iranian Studies Program

Mahnaz Afkhami will discuss her experience with the Iranian women’s movement. Conversation will be in English. Mahnaz Afkhami is the founder, president, and CEO of Women’s Learning Partnership and former Minister for Women’s Affairs in Iran. Afkhami has been a leading advocate of women's rights for more than four decades, having founded and served as director and president of several international...

Professor Mehrangiz Kar, a human rights lawyer from Iran, is an internationally recognized writer, speaker and activist who advocates for the defense of women’s and human rights in Iran and throughout the Islamic world. A common theme in her work is the tension between Iranian law and the core principles of human rights and human dignity. She will discuss the women’s rights movement in Iran with D...

Abbas Milani discusses his new book Saadi and Humanism (written with Maryam Mirzadeh, published by Zemestan Press in Iran). The book is in Persian/Farsi, the conversation was in English.

Heinz Gärtner and Mitra Shahmoradi discuss their recent book Iran in the International System: Iran between Great Powers and Great Ideas (Routledge, January 2020). They are joined by Abbas Milani who will speak about his chapter in the book. Drawing on Iran’s history and its relations with great powers and its regional neighbors, this book addresses the question of how much continuity and/or chang...

Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, a member of a family long considered a pillar of the Islamic Republic of Iran, became a prisoner of conscience in that regime and is now a defender of equal rights for women—one of the many fascinating transformations in Iran in recent years. She discusses the evolution and future of the women’s rights movement in Iran. The conversation will be live-translated from Persi...

April 22, 2020 Arash Alaei, Kamiar Alaei Discussion will include a brief overview of the current situation of the coronavirus in Iran followed by a health policy analysis of: • When, how and why the virus entered Iran; • Whether it was preventable or manageable at early stages; • What was the initial reaction of policymakers in Iran; • A briefing about the controversy among stakeholders on when an...

Dr. Amir Afkhami April 16, 2020 Why has the novel coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic been so widespread and deadly in Iran and what are the consequences of the outbreak? This lecture will attempt to answer these questions by presenting a timeline of the COVID19 outbreak in Iran and the historic and political determinants that shape Tehran’s public health policy against the pandemic. Amir A. Afkhami, M...

Dr. Mandana Zandian lectured at Stanford on March 5, 2020. In October 1977, the German-Iranian Cultural Association in Tehran hosted ten nights of literature reading sessions, organized by the Iranian Writers Association. This series of literature readings, performed by 60 writers, is considered as an early manifestation of a public expression of political protest against the Pahlavi regime. Rerea...

Professor Narges Bajoghli discussed her recent book "Iran Reframed" at Stanford on February 20, 2020. “An inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the debates around the future of the Islamic Republic. More than half of Iran's citizens were not alive at the time of the 1979 Revolution. Now entering its fifth decade in power, the Iranian regime faces the paradox of any successful...

On October 15, 2019, Reza Farokhfal discussed his recent book "In the Presence of the Secret of Motherland" and Iran and "Iranianity" in Persian literature. Reza Farokhfal is a published writer in his home country of Iran. His fictional works as well as his works in literary theory and cultural studies have appeared in various literary periodicals and anthologies. His latest book, Of Neda’s Gaze,...

Najmieh Batmanglij, hailed as “The Grande Dame of Iranian Cooking” by The Washington Post, has spent the past 40 years cooking, traveling, and adapting authentic Persian recipes to tastes and techniques in the West. Her celebrated cook books include Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey, and her most recent book Cooking in...

Mikhal Dekel discusses her most recent book, "Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey." Beginning in March 1942, Iran became a place of refuge to over one hundred thousand Polish citizens—Catholic but also Jewish—who joined other Jewish refugees already there. Professor Dekel, whose father was a child refugee in Tehran, will discuss the circumstances that brought him and others to Iran, the r...

Dominic Parviz Brookshaw is Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of Oxford, and Senior Research Fellow in Persian at Wadham College, Oxford. From 2011-2013 he was Assistant Professor of Persian Literature and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Professor Brookshaw currently serves on the Editorial Board of Middle Eastern Literatures and, for a decade (2004-2014),...

Naz Deravian is a James Beard Award nominated author of Bottom of the Pot: Persian Recipes and Stories (Flatiron Books). She is the recipient of The IACP Julia Child First Book Award, presented by The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, Saveur, O Magazine, and Montecristo Magazine. She has also been profiled in...

April 25, 2019 Speaker: Parissa Parissa, the grande dame of classical Persian music, led a discussion/workshop on the history, context, and purpose of Iranian classical music. Parissa is known for her extraordinary vocal ability and style. She is the most prominent and influential Iranian female classical singer of the past fifty years. Parissa studied the repertoire of radif and old tasnifs with...

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been in the eyes of the storm ever since its foundation four decades ago. Initially, some analysts could not have confidence in its durability, but it has endured many domestic and foreign policy challenges. Despite being at loggerheads with the United States and some of its regional allies for most of its life, it has remained defiant and resilient. However, in th...

Amir A. Afkhami presents an overview of pandemic cholera’s seminal role in the emergence and development of modernity in Iran during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This includes details on cholera’s transformative impact on the country’s governance and perspectives on medicine, disease, and public health. It also sheds light on how cholera shaped Iran's globalization and diplomacy and how...

Dr. Pooya Azadi, Stanford Iran 2040 project manager, presented an overview of the research outcomes as well as his personal experience in managing the project. Established in 2016 in the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, the Stanford Iran 2040 Project serves as a hub for scholars—particularly in the Iranian diaspora—to conduct research on the future of Iran. The team conduct...

Professor Fathali M. Moghddam discusses how radicalization has become a serious global problem. The talk explores mutual radicalization, where groups and nations push each other to extremes. Drawing from well-established psychological principles, a model of mutual radicalization is presented and international and national case studies are used as illustrative examples. Fathali M. Moghaddam is Dire...

Talk by David Menashri at Stanford University's Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies on December 4, 2018. Co-sponsored by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. David Menashri is professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and Senior Research Fellow at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies and the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. He found...

(Talk is in English after the first two minutes) Masih Alinejad spoke about her book "The Wind in My Hair" at Stanford University on November 29, 2018. Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist, women's rights activist, TV host of Tablet satirical news program and author of the memoir The Wind in My Hair. In 2014, Alinejad launched the “My Stealthy Freedom” campaign, one of the many such efforts ins...

Zakaria Hashemi is an acclaimed director, novelist, documentary filmmaker for television, and the lead actor in Ebrahim Golestan’s “Brick and Mirror.” He discusses his book With Open Eyes (2004), a memoir-like novel describing his experiences as a filmmaker intimately involved in the Iran-Iraq war. Hashemi was discovered by Farough Farrokzad and introduced to Mr. Golestan; their collaboration has...

Inspired by the Kronos Quartet’s performance Music For Change: The Banned Countries, Stanford Live is partnering with the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies to bring together artists and Stanford foreign relations experts to discuss the impacts of the 2017 Executive Orders that limit travel from Muslim-majority countries to the US. How are these orders affecting the institutio...

Mohammadreza Darvishi was born in 1955, in Shiraz. In 1979, he graduated from the University of Tehran with honors in composition. Darvishi has taught at several universities in Iran and given many lectures all around the world. He has travelled to Iran's cities and villages for about 30 years in search for the lost roots of Iranian regional music. The fruit of this endeavor is “The encyclopedia o...

Workshop with renowned Iranian film director Bahram Beyzaie at Stanford University, January-March 2013. Sponsored by the Stanford Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, and the Bita Daryabari Endowment in Persian Letters. The five series workshop based on the following topics: 2/21: THE MEANING OF SHAHNAMEH AS A SOCIAL WORK2/28: NON WRITTEN MYTHS OF PRE-SHAHNAMEH PERIOD 3/7: THE...