The Persian Short Story and Translation: Journey to course development

Although teaching material for introductory and intermediate level Persian abound, there are very few coursebooks that are aimed for the advanced level students. Some of these coursebooks are developed for Persian for Specific Purposes, such as What the Persian Media Says (Shabanai-Jadidi 2015), Persian Academic Reading (Aghdassi 2019), and Persian in International Relations and Foreign Policy (Esmaili-Sardari and Mizza 2022).
Since Persian language and Persian literature are intertwined, a natural next step after general Persian language textbooks is modern Persian prose. Short stories due to their conciseness are a perfect candidate for material for advanced level students. However, care must be taken in choosing the right kind of texts so that the linguistic and literary level of the selected short stories are not far beyond the proficiency level of the students, otherwise, they will get discouraged. Also, the genre of short stories selected must be chosen such that they will attract the students’ attention, especially in today’s world where the attention span of the youth is getting shorter.
In the present talk, I will walk you through a course I have created for advanced level students of Persian language, which focuses on short stories encompassing elements of fantasy, surrealism, and the paranormal, such as Hedayat’s The Doll Behind the Curtain, Daneshvar’s The Snake and the Man, Golestan’s The Fish and its Pair, Esma’ili’s Animal Diseases, and others. I will review class activities and students’ tasks. I will also discuss how allocating part of the class to a translation workshop enhances students’ comprehension of the text. Finally, I will discuss the assignments as well as the formative and summative assessments I use in this course. I hope to be able to present a blueprint for the process of course and material development for the younger generation of Persian language instructors.