Parse: An Exploration of Critical Topics in Iranian Studies

In the 90th episode of Parse, dive into the poetic retelling of Nizami Ganjavi’s timeless love poem, Leyli u Majnun , by the award-winning  poet and illustrator, Yann Damizen. In this book launch, you will hear from Aqsa Ijaz and Thomas Harrison who recently have translated Damizen’s work from French to English.   Dive into the poetic retelling of Nizami Ganjavi’s timeless love poem,  Leyli u Majn...

In the 89th episode of Parse, Professor Carlo Cereti will present and discuss several passages taken from the Avesta and from Pahlavi literature, highlighting the chronological development of Zoroastrian thought about the end of times. The earliest texts to be discussed date to the early Achaemenid or immediately pre-Achaemenid period, while the later ones reflect Zoroastrian speculation in late S...

The 88th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a presentation given by Professor Nicolas Sims-Williams on surviving documents in the ancient Bactrian language, an Eastern Iranian language that has long been extinct. Numerous documents in Bactrian dating from the 4th-8th century CE have emerged since the early 1990s. They include letters, legal contracts and economic documents, mostly written on parchm...

In the 87th episode of Parse, Learn more about the carefully illustrated worlds of celebrated artist Shiva Ahmadi, one of the featured artists in the exhibition Being & Belonging: Contemporary Women Artists from the Islamic World and Beyond, which took place in the ROM July2023 to January 2024. In this illustrated talk, Ahmadi shares deep insight into her personal and professional histories, a...

The 86th episode of Parse , is an except of Jenny Rose’s illustrated talk, based on research for her most recent book – Between Boston and Bombay: Cultural and Commercial Encounters of Yankees and Parsis 1771-1865 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Her book focuses on the early contact of Americans with Zoroastrians and their religion from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. American interest in the “...

The 85th episode of Parse provides some reflections on the archival traces of the Gulistan harem and its residents during Nasir al-Din Shah’s reign (1848-1896). The Gulistan harem was a woman-dominated homosocial space, housed in a unique domestic institution wherein tradition, modernity, piety, cosmopolitanism, gender, class and racial differences were negotiated by a host of local and transnatio...

The 84th episode of Parse is on Aziz Ahmad’s observations on “Hindu historiography,” in his book, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment . The speaker in this talk, Supriya Gandhi, examines select Persian writings by eighteenth and nineteenth-century Hindu scribes and ask how they might illuminate the complex genealogies of modern Hindu thought.    Dr. Gandhi is a historian of South...

Bringing together cinema studies, Middle East studies, Black studies, and postcolonial theory, Parisa Vaziri’s new book, Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery explores African enslavement in the Indian Ocean through the little-known history of Iranian cinema. It shows that Iranian film reveals a resistance to facticity representative of the history of African enslavement in the Indian Ocean an...

In the historiography of modern Iran, legal archives are under-explored. Yet they are extremely rich sources that offer insight into the lifeworlds of marginal subjects, who exist at the threshold of the legitimate space of citizenship. In the 82nd episode of Parse , Dr. Jairan Gahan centers the constructed archival category of “sex-related crimes” to raise questions about the processes of produci...

The 81st episode of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Domenico Ingenito on his new book, من از نهایت شب حرف می‌زنم / Io parlo dai confini della notte / I Speak from the Edges of the Night provides a critical edition and Italian translation of Forough Farrokhzad’s entire poetic production. The book features the Persian text of all the original collections of poetry published by Farrokhzad duri...

The 80th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a lecture given by Dr. Eva Orthmann titled, “Bilingual Texts from India: Combining Arabic and Persian with Indic Languages”.      Eva Orthmann is Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Göttingen. She obtained her MA degree in Islamic and Iranian Studies at the University of Tübingen in 1995, followed by a PhD in 2000 at the University of Halle-...

The 79th of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Dr. Daniel Sheffield titled “Pragmatic Zoroastrian Theology: Mulla Firuz against the Anti-Vaxxers, Bombay, 1806”. The talk deals with how in the early 19th century when the smallpox vaccine first arrived in India, many Parsis were strongly against getting vaccinated because Zoroastrian priest Dastur Barjorji Khurshedji Darab Pahlanna issued a decr...

The 78th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Pouneh Shahbani-Jadidi titled “A Psycholinguistic Approach to Teaching Persian as a Second Language”.     Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi is an Instructional Professor of Persian at the University of Chicago. She was awarded a Ph. D. in Linguistics from the University of Ottawa in 2012 and another Ph. D. in Applied Linguistics from Tehran Azad Unive...

The 77th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Dr. Peyman Nojoumian titled “Innovative Technology in the Language Classroom: Using Virtual Reality in Task-Based Language Teaching”.    Nojoumian is an Associate Professor (Teaching) of Persian at the University of Southern California. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Ottawa, Canada and two masters: one in Speech &...

The 76th episode of Parse is an excerpt from a talk given by Zahra Khosrowshahi titled “Iranian Women Filmmakers: A Cinema of Resistance”. In this presentation, Zahra Khosroshahi discusses her current book project on the works of Iranian women filmmakers both inside and outside the country. She explores how women’s filmmaking confronts gender and representation, challenges the male gaze, and speak...

The 75th episode of Parse is an excerpt from a talk given by Dr. Erik Anonby and Dr. Jaffer Sheyholislami on Mapping Iranian Languages, using Kurdish as the case study.   Erik Anonby is Professor of Linguistics and French at Carleton University. His research focuses on the documentation and mapping of Iran’s languages. Currently, he works with an international research team as editor of the Atlas...

The 74th episode of Parse is an excerpt from talk a given by Dr. Mahbod Ghaffari titled the “Grammaticalization of “Dāshtan”.   Mahbod Ghaffari is an Associate in Persian Language and Culture at the University of Cambridge. He received his Ph. D. in linguistics in Iran and a certificate in “Leadership in Higher Education” from the University of Oxford. He has taught Persian language and culture, I...

The 73rd episode of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Dr. Ali R. Abasi titled “Discourse Markers in Persian: Description and Instructional Implications for Learners of Persian”.   Ali R. Abasi is an Associate Professor of Persian at the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Maryland. Trained as an applied linguist, his primary research interests include second la...

The 72nd episode of Parse is an excerpt from a talk given by Dr. Azita H. Taleghani titled “Acquisition of Persian Differential Object Marker “râ”:  A Challenge for the Second Language Learners and Heritage Speakers.”    Taleghani is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in Persian language, literature, and linguistics at the University of Toronto. Her research has primarily focused on second-la...

The 71st episode of Parse is an excerpt a talk given by Karine Megerdoomian titled Linguistic Data Driven Approach to Persian Pedagogy: Practical Application to Compound Verbs. Megerdoomian is the Principal Artificial Intelligence Engineer at the MITRE Corporation. She is a theoretical and computational linguist specializing in less commonly taught languages, with emphasis on Persian and Armenian....

The 70th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Nahal Akbari on the challenges that Persian language instructors might face in their commitment to inclusive and equitable teaching to a diverse group of heritage, non-heritage, and underrepresented students in their classrooms. Particular attention will be given to gender inclusiveness, linguistic diversity, and attitudes and identities f...

The 69th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Masoud Jasbi on Persian language pedagogy, focusing on definiteness and pluralization in Persian and presenting several “leaky generalizations” that may have affected Persian language pedagogy. Jasbi suggests that a closer dialogue between theoretical linguistics and language pedagogy would reduce errors introduced by leaky generalizations...

The 68th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Maziyar Faridi on Férydoun Rahnéma’s cinematic works. Faridi theorizes a notion of friendship-as-haunting at the understudied nexus between Rahnéma’s poetry, his theoretical writings on cinema, and his films.  Fereydoun Rahnema was an Iranian film director and poet. He is most known for his 1960 short film, Takht-e Jamshid ( Persepolis ),...

The 67th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a multimedia presentation, panel discussion and double book launch focused on the post-revolutionary Iranian popular culture in “Tehrangeles” (a portmanteau deriving from a combination of Tehran and Los Angeles) -- a geographic area in Southern California between Los Angeles and Orange Country which is home to the largest concentration of Iranians outside...

The 66th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a talk given by Asghar Seyed-Gohrab titled “Depicting the Others: Zhale Qa’em-Maqami and the Function of Poetry”.     Professor Seyed-Gohrab is the new chair of Iranian and Persian studies at Utrecht University. Central to Seyed-Gohrab’s research is the study of medieval Persian poetry (both secular and religious) and its reception in the modern world, ex...