Stanford Iranian Studies Program

September 5, 2025 On The Rocky Road Of Life is the richly detailed personal and professional memoir of Zakaria Hashemi—an artist whose life story unfolds across the alleys and seasons of Tehran, from the scorching heat to the biting cold, from the south to the north of the city during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The book traces his early days, growing up amid poverty in the neighborhoods o...

June 10, 2025 Ehssan Hanif Fifth Zahedi Family Fellow lecture held at Stanford University. Following a brief period of oil nationalization, the 1953 coup that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh marked a critical turning point in Iran’s political and economic trajectory. The coup paved the way for the 1954 Consortium Agreement—a pivotal settlement between the Iranian state and the global oil cartel known...

A book talk with two of the authors of "Revolutionary Engineers: Learning, Politics, and Activism at Aryamehr University of Technology" (MIT press, 2025). In 1966, the Shah of Iran established Arya-Mehr University of Technology (AMUT), now known as Sharif University of Technology, as part of a larger campaign to modernize the nation. In 1979, AMUT engineering students played a critical role in the...

May 23, 2025 Mahasti Afshar joins us to discuss her book Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis 1967-1977 (Mage Publishers, 2025), an international event that was held every summer between 1976-1977 in Shiraz and Persepolis. The festival presented outstanding works in music, dance, drama, and film from around the world with the goal of generating a cross-cultural dialogue and enriching the Iranian cr...

May 22, 2025 Simorgh: Portraits on My Mind (Mage Publishers, 2025), is one of Abbas Milani’s most self-reflective and engaging books. The two-part Persian original, Si-Chehreh, has been masterfully translated by Mahasti Afshar in a single volume. Titled Simorgh after the mythical bird that embodies humanity’s collective quest for the truth in Attar’s poetry, Milani explores the lives and passions,...

May 15, 2025 The relationship between music and revolution has often been a fraught one. This lecture discusses the tension between the two, focusing on the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It chronicles the evolution of state policy towards music in the years 1979-1988 against the background of doctrinal discussions within Twelver Shiism in Iran, that pitted traditionalists against the charismatic aut...

Iran's increasing population has posed significant challenges to agriculture in ensuring food security. As a major agricultural producer in the Middle East, Iran has long pursued the goal of food self-sufficiency. However, the viability of this ambitious objective remains uncertain and widely debated. This conversation between Dr. Kaveh Madani and Dr. Mohsen B. Mesgaran on May 1, 2025 at Stanford...

April 29, 2025 از من گفتن بود: کاش خاموشی بود؛ روزگارِ همهمه و هیاهوست. سکوت، گوهرِ کمیاب و حتی نایابی‌ست. اهلِ زبان، نااهل شده‌اند، وگرنه زبان فارسی در بهترین وقتِ خود است. از کلامِ کهن تا روزمره را می‌توان کنار هم کاشت؛ زیبا، رَسا و گویا، فارغ از هیچ توضیح و شرحی، می‌بالد، بار می‌گیرد و بار می‌دهد. کاش می‌شد دل‌ْدرست نشست و فقط گفت و نوشت. مجالِ ما—درست‌تر بگویم، مجالِ من—تنگ و تُرُش بود. از من...

April 18, 2025 Discussion with the writers and directors of the Academy Award winning film “In the Shadow of the Cypress,” Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani. The film won the 2025 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. “A former captain, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, lives with his daughter in a humble house located by the sea. Together, they live an isolated life and have to confro...

Completed in 1938, the Trans-Iranian Railway connected Tehran to Iran's two major bodies of water: the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south. Iran's first national railway, it produced and disrupted various kinds of movement—voluntary and forced, intended and unintended, on different scales and in different directions—among Iranian diplomats, tribesmen, migrant laborers, techn...

March 6, 2025 A half-day conference celebrating important archival collections at Stanford University created by or about Iranian women. Scholars explored the intricacies of archival creation, the vital role these collections play in preserving the modern history of Iranian women, and the pressing need for continued archival research and scholarship in this area. Farzaneh Milani is Raymond J. Nels...

March 6, 2025 A half-day conference celebrating important archival collections at Stanford University created by or about Iranian women. Scholars explored the intricacies of archival creation, the vital role these collections play in preserving the modern history of Iranian women, and the pressing need for continued archival research and scholarship in this area. Kioumars Ghereghlou is the Curator...

February 13, 2025 This talk debunks the myth that, since alcohol is forbidden in Islam, “good” Muslims do not drink. It argues that, rather than extraneous to Islam, alcohol is integral to the faith, present through its very presumed absence. It presents traditional Islam, heir to a variegated Byzantine-Christian and Persian-Zoroastrian vinous tradition, not as the pettifogging creed that it appea...

For Iranian musicians, intercultural collaborations serve as a means to break free from isolation and connect with the wider world. This became particularly important in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which led to a significant decline in diplomatic relations between Iran and Western and many Arab countries. As Iranian society became more isolated, there arose a growing need to esta...

The second annual Christine Mona Khademi lecture with Dr. Nikta Fakhri was held January 30, 2025. Living systems are in constant motion, from the inner workings of our cells to the synchronized movements of bird flocks. What sets these systems apart is that they are powered by tiny, energy-consuming components that generate their own movement and forces. In this talk, I’ll uncover the hidden rules...

Over the course of late antiquity, many Jews lived in the Sasanian Empire, a Persian and Zoroastrian power that rivaled the Romans to their west in size and strength. Among these Jews were a community of rabbis who are featured in, and were responsible for, the Babylonian Talmud, one of the most influential texts in Jewish history. How did life under the Sasanian Empire affect Jews, the rabbis, an...

A talk by the fourth recipient of the Zahedi Family Fellowship, Dr. Hussein Banai. In this talk, Dr. Hussein Banai focuses on the procurement of late-Pahlavi Iran’s credibility, and Mohammadreza Shah’s legitimacy, in its diplomatic outreach toward the great powers, especially in the United States. It does so by drawing on official documents, personal notes and correspondence between top-level offi...

November 21, 2024 The space between stars is a magnetic soup of electrons, atoms, molecules, ions, and dust grains, known as the interstellar medium (ISM). It is this material that ultimately condenses to form stars, planets, and life. The densest and coldest part of the ISM are the birthplace of stars. However, the exact processes governing star formation within galaxies remain one of astrophysic...

The space between stars is a magnetic soup of electrons, atoms, molecules, ions, and dust grains, known as the interstellar medium (ISM). It is this material that ultimately condenses to form stars, planets, and life. The densest and coldest part of the ISM are the birthplace of stars. However, the exact processes governing star formation within galaxies remain one of astrophysics' most compelling...

Join us for a lecture by Dr. Farshad Sonboldel, drawn from his recent book "The Rebellion of Forms in Modern Persian Poetry" (Bloomsbury, 2024). During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, shifts in poetic styles and themes emerged, diverging from the ideals of the Literary Return Movement. Some poets of this era sought to engage with contemporary issues, notably the socio-political turmoil of...

A virtual conversation with Dr. Abbas Milani and Dr. Alina Utrata about the book "An Encounter with Dylan Thomas" by Ebrahim Golestan. Published by Mage Publishers in 2022, the book is edited and translated by Dr. Abbas Milani, and includes material found in the new Ebrahim Golestan archive at Stanford University. This event was hosted on September 26, 2024. About the book: Abadan, 1951. Iran and...

Professor Saeed Talajooy discusses the evolution of female protagonists in Bahram Beyzaie’s “Puppet Trilogy," “The Snake King” (1966), and “Ballad of Tārā" (1978-9). Ballad of Tārā, the second film in Professor Beyzaie's village trilogy, is focused on negotiating a collective identity that is cognizant of the past but has transcended the obsessions with glorifying or dismissing the past and its he...

The inaugural "Christine Mona Khademi lecture" with Dr. Maryam Shanechi organized on May 16, 2024. A major challenge in engineering and neuroscience is to model, decode, and control the activity of large populations of neurons that underlie our brain’s dysfunctions. Dr. Maryam Shanechi presents her work at the interface of AI, control theory, and neuroscience to develop closed-loop brain-machine i...

The 14th Bita Prize for Persian Arts celebrating acclaimed Iranian musician Shahram Nazeri was organized on May 10, 2024. Shahram Nazeri was born on August 22, 1949, in Kermanshah, Iran. His was a family steeped in art and culture. Though his father was a capable vocalist, it was his mother who first recognized and nurtured her son's talents and became his first music teacher. Nazeri gave his firs...

Chef Nasim Alikhani discusses how, even 35 years after leaving Iran for New York, she constantly looks for ways to connect back to her homeland, her culture, and the home she has left behind. In this talk she elaborates on her journey to opening her restaurant Sofreh and the ways in which it has empowered her to express herself, her culture, and what home means to her. Nasim Alikhani was born and...