2022 Election

Dear AIS Members,

Thank you for considering me as a member of the AIS Council and for this opportunity to tell you a little about myself and why I am running for this position.

The interdisciplinary nature of my research as a Media Studies scholar has often required that I engage fields outside of Iranian Studies. In these arenas, I have always worked to bring a bigger focus on Iranian studies so that scholars and issues in our field gain wider recognition and engagement. For example, as the co-Chair of the Middle East Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies from 2011-2013, I was active in pushing for a broader inclusion of scholars and creators of Iranian Media. Since that time, I have continued to work with subsequent chairs and other colleagues from that professional society to facilitate the opportunities for emerging scholars whose work engages both Media Studies and Iranian Studies.

In my current position as the Chair of the Media and Communication Studies department at the Catholic University of America where I also serve as faculty for the Islamic World Studies program, I use every opportunity to highlight Iranian Studies and to introduce the scholarship in our field to students and colleagues who would otherwise not have had the opportunity to engage this work. My dedication to expanding access to texts in Iranian media and scholarship is also reflected in my work as a translator: I have subtitled the films of Abbas Kiarostami for the Criterion Collection, and my translation of Mohsen Kadivar’ <em>Islam and Human Rights</em> was published this year by Edinburgh University Press.

As an active journal and manuscript reviewer, almost all of the work I review falls within Iranian Studies. Providing this professional service to the field has also been a great pleasure, especially because it gives me the chance to read the work of emerging young scholars. It is clear that the field has grown in exciting and inclusive ways since the time I attended my very first AIS conference back in 2002.

My own research largely focuses on Iranian digital media cultures. In addition to cultures of resistance, I have also been attuned to the ways that the Iranian state has used various forms of media to promote its own agendas. My book, <em>Electronic Iran: The Cultural Politics of an Online Evolution </em>(Rutgers, 2013) was among the first to caution about state sponsored uses of digital technology and cultural production. In addition to my work on digital media, I have also published on Iranian documentary and narrative films.

As the above indicates, my research and professional service has been dedicated to strengthening and promoting Iranian Studies. Being a part of the AIS council would be the first time I would have the opportunity to be fully surrounded with colleagues who are specifically working in Iranian Studies and who share the goals of maintaining and expanding excellence in the field. I also hope to facilitate more opportunities for junior scholars, whether in the form of encouraging their involvement in AIS, creating resources to foster research, and/or building mentorship relationships.

Shervin Farridnejad is a Professor of Iranian Studies, History, Languages and Cultures of the Near East at the University of Hamburg and member of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures / Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts. He is also the director of the MA programme “Manuscript Cultures” at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at the University of Hamburg. He studied ancient Iranian languages, philology, religions and art history and received his PhD in Ancient/Middle Iranian and Zoroastrian Studies from the Department of Iranian Studies of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Germany) in 2014. He is the author of “The language of images: A study on iconographic exegesis of the anthropomorphic divine images in Zoroastrianism” (Die Sprache der Bilder: Eine Studie zur ikonographischen Exegese der anthropomorphen Götterbilder im Zoroastrismus. Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018) and co-author of A Handbook of Persian Calligraphy and Related Arts (Brill 2022). He is also the co-editor of a book series titled, Ancient Iran Series (AIS) for Brill, co-editor of the peer-reviewed edited volumes Sasanian Studies: Late Antique Iranian World for Harrassowitz Verlag as well as co.editor of the peer-reviewed journal Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review (DABIR) for Brill and many other edited volumes. His research concerns different aspects of the Antique and Late Antique Iranian Cultural and Religious History, Persianate Cultural and Religious History, most epecifucally the Zoroastrian Religion, Rituals and Literature, Dynamics and interdependencies between Zoroastrian and non-Zoroastrian in the (early) Islamic Period, Old and Middle Iranian Philology and Literature, Persianate Manuscript Cultures and Codicology as well as the Judeo-Persian Literature.

Among his last publications are: ‘The Zoroastrian Twelve Imams and the Fourteen Infallibles: Islamic Theological Terminology in Zoroastrian New Persian Literature (Zoroastrian Literature in New Persian III)’. In The Reward of the Righteous. Festschrift in Honour of Almut Hintze, edited by A. Cantera, M. Macuch, and N. Sims-Williams, 157–75. Iranica 29. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2022; ‘“Under the Banner of the Mane.” Pahlavi Letters and the Sasanian Art of Epistolography. An Unpublished Pahlavi Papyrus Letter from Sasanian Egypt, P.Pehl. 569’. In Sasanian Studies. Late Antique Iranian World, 1:57–79. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2022, as well as ‘The Banquet for the Gods: Sacrificial Meat and Bread as the Main Ritual Foods in Zoroastrian Liturgies’. In Food for Gods, Food for Mortals. Culinary and Dining Practices in the Greater Iranian World, Ed. by Shervin Farridnejad and Touraj Daryaee, 59–114. ČISTĀ. Studies in the History, Cultures and Religions of the Iranian World. Irvine, CA: University of Irvine, 2022.

As an AIS Council member:

I have been involved with the Association of Iranian Studies (AIS) since 2012 and in addition to my participation in conferences, I serves since May 2020 as Book Review Editor of the Journal Iranian Studies (Journal of the Association for Iranian Studies). As an AIS Council member, I would focus on creating more effective collaborations and exchange with scholars and students working and studying in Iran and the wider Persianate world, as well as for the promotion of Iranian and Persianate Studies all over the world.

Since 2018, I have been working as Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of English at Rutgers University-Newark. I came to the position following a year-long postdoc based at the Europe in the Middle East-Middle East in Europe research program in Berlin (2016-17) and a visiting assistant professorship in modern Iranian studies at Brown University (2017-18). My research and teaching interests cover modern Arabic and Persian literatures and the cultural history of the Middle East, with an emphasis on Iran, Iraq, the Levant, and, increasingly, Afghanistan. My teaching revolves around Arabic and Persian fiction and film, world literature, translation studies and war culture. I'm particularly interested in the way that cultural production deals with violent pasts, wars, notions of transitional justice, and representations of urban space. I am currently completing a book manuscript entitled, Dust That Never Settled: Afterlives of the Iran-Iraq War in Arabic and Persian Literatures. The book argues for the expansion of comparative literary studies across the Arabic and Persian linguistic spheres based on the common experience of the Iran-Iraq war and the various responses of writers to it since 1980.​ Other recent publications and ongoing research projects include a volume which I co-edited with Mehdi Khorrami titled Losing Our Minds, Coming to Our Senses: Sensory Readings of Persian Literature and Culture (Leiden UP, 2021) and a current second research project on literary representations of 1980s in Southwest Asia. 

As my research and teaching suggest, I have tried to connect Iranian studies in its contemporary cultural iterations to adjacent and parallel fields in Middle East studies and global history. As an AIS council member, I would look to advance that agenda within the overarching aims of AIS. 

Sara Mashayekh is a PhD student in the Department of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her background is in theater, history, as well as literature. She received her BA in English Literature from University of California Irvine and her first MA in History from the same university. Her dissertation was a close study of the Middle Persian text, Karnamag-i Ardaxshir-i Pabagan. She later went to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, where she earned her second MA in Advanced Theater Practice. As part of her MA dissertation in Central she composed a one woman show inspired by traditional Iranian methods of performance and storytelling such as Naqqali and Pardeh-khani. Sara is currently studying for her PhD in UCSB where she is working on Iranian traditional theater and storytelling.

Sara has been a member of AIS since 2010 when she attended and presented a paper in the conference that took place in Los Angeles. Since then, she has been an active participant in AIS conferences all over the world. She likes to show her appreciation for this great community of scholars focusing on her country of birth, which has also been the subject of her studies for many years, by helping other graduate students receive what they need from this community to pursue their goal.

Sebastian James Rose is a third year History PhD student at the University of Greenwich and recipient of the John Charles Maynard Scholarship. Sebastian completed his B.A. in History at the University of Leicester and his M.A. in International Relations at Leiden University. Sebastian’s M.A. thesis focused on new media and spectres of imperialism in Iran. His current research analyses the construction, operation, and maintenance of the Indo-European Telegraph Department (IETD) in Iran and the Persian Gulf in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Centring telegraph stations, workers, and networks, his thesis attempts to produce a history of the telegraph from below. In 2021 Sebastian was shortlisted for the Olivette Otele Prize for his paper exploring racialisation of workers in the IETD.

Like many scholars researching Iran, my work draws upon a variety of academic fields, such as the History of Science and Technology, Imperial History and Area Studies. With my candidacy, I will build on the diversity within Iranian studies by continuing to make AIS accessible to scholars from diverse intellectual and personal backgrounds. PhD research is extremely rewarding, but without a supportive network it can be challenging. I am grateful to my peers who have built networks for young scholars, such as the Iranian Studies Collective, which have proved important for myself and others during the pandemic and beyond. I want to continue the wonderful work already begun by the current representatives by offering more digital and in-person platforms for graduate students. I understand the immense pressures we face during and after our studies as PhD and early career scholars. I will work to expand support for graduate students by creating spaces for us to connect, engage intellectually, and importantly, support each other.

I have contributed to academic journals and edited books, as well as organise and participate in presentations and roundtables at conferences and workshops. I aim to offer a collaborative, open, and intellectually stimulating environment for students to organise and promote initiatives, as well as voice issues and concerns. Well-being and mental health are increasingly important to all of us as conditions for graduate students deteriorate. I will encourage institutional and peer support and defend the interests of graduate students. I will also support greater connections with scholars outside of Europe and North America and look for opportunities for assisting greater participation to those scholars.