Stanford Iranian Studies Program

Homa Sarshar discusses her life and work, and the role of women in Iran. Homa Sarshar is a published author, award-winning journalist, writer, and media personality. She is the author of four books and the editor of eleven other volumes, including five volumes of the Iranian Women's Studies Foundation Journal and four volumes of The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews. Her latest book Sha’ban Jaf...

April 15, 2021 An unprecedented glimpse into "endless war" from a Middle Eastern perspective, Salar Abdoh’s novel, "Out of Mesopotamia," follows in the tradition of the Western canon of martial writers–from Hemingway and Orwell to Tim O'Brien and Philip Caputo–but then subverts and expands upon the genre before completely blowing it apart. Drawing from his firsthand experience of being embedded wi...

October 15, 2020 Shahrnush Parsipur was born in Tehran, Iran and received her BA in Sociology from the University of Tehran. She wrote her first novel at the age of 28, Sag va Zememstaneh Boland (The Dog and the Long Winter) and later that year was imprisoned for several months for protesting the execution of two activists. She wrote her second novel in France, Majerahayeh Sadeh va Kuchake Ruheh D...

Négar Djavadi was born in Iran in 1969 to a family of intellectuals opposed to the regimes both of the Shah, then of Khomeini. She arrived in France at the age of eleven, having crossed the mountains of Kurdistan on horseback with her mother and sister. She is a screenwriter and lives in Paris. Disoriental is her first novel. Her second novel comes out in France in September 2020.

NASRIN is an immersive portrait of attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, one of the world’s most prominent human rights activists and political prisoners. Written and directed by Jeff Kaufman, produced by Marcia Ross, and secretly filmed in Iran by women and men who risked arrest to make it, the film also tells the story of Iran’s remarkably resilient women’s rights movement. Nasrin has long fought for the ri...

"Political mobility and freedom to choose are the quintessential mandate of women in the second decade of the 21st century. From Northwest Africa to Southeast Asia, and anywhere in-between Muslim women are mobilizing, joining their voices and marshalling their resources, determined to have a seat at their society’s political table. Increasingly educated and well informed, women have challenged the...

This year the Stanford Global Studies Summer Film Festival will be held virtually. Join us from your home as we watch seven films from around the world that focus on the theme “Love in the Time of Cinema.” The Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies invite you to watch Chicken with Plums from home at a time that works for you...

Mansoureh Shojaee has been one of the leaders of the Iranian women’s rights movement for over 20 years and involved in politics for more than 30 years. She was a librarian at the National Library in Tehran for 22 years and worked as a journalist, freelance writer and literary translator for French. She will discuss the women’s rights movement in Iran with Dr. Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Stud...

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...