PERSIPHONY Newsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park No. 2: Spring 2007 A Spring Song by Sa`di of Shiraz Trees are blossoming, nightingales drunk with joy the world is young again, friends gathered in merry-making. There as grass is trampled under the feet of joy and so many folks nobles and the rabble alike rise up to join in the dance behold my beloved of the assembly, always pulling at my heart, this day adorned in the loveliest of garbs! Then here, in the private recesses of my mind, grows a rosebush before whose stature the world’s tallest cypress falls prostrate and when you question that cypress, “but you bear no fruit!” he responds, “oh yes, free spirits often come empty-handed.” Part of Abbas Kiarostami’s Nowruz gift to CPS. For more visit: http://www.languages.umd.edu/persian -- click on play the University Library in all areas of Persian Studies and support the Library’s efforts to find funding for necessary expenses such as cataloguing. Such contributions make exciting new cultural and academic events possible on our campus. In April I was delighted to attend the exhibit “Persian Visions: Contempo- rary Photography from Iran” that was hung in our Art Gal- lery from April 2 to the 29 th . Likewise, the splendid series of lectures on the theme of “The Political Culture of Mar- tyrdom in Iran and the Middle East”, delivered by Professor Ali Banuazizi, which attracted very significant audiences from all parts of the campus and the surrounding commu- nity, had been made possible by an endowment established in 2005 by the Persian Heritage Foundation (PHF) in the name of Professor Ehsan Yarshater, acknowledged dean of the Iranian Studies the world over and Editor-in-Chief of the monumental reference work, The Encyclopaedia Iranica. Finally, it is especially auspicious that the new Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Maryland will be Professor Nariman Farvar- din, currently Dean of the A. James Cark School of Engi- neering. Nariman is one of many members of the faculty, who, like many of our students in a variety of fields, come from a Persian background. James F. Harris, Dean College of Arts and Humanities A Message from the Dean It is a pleasure to write a few lines about the progress made by the Center for Persian Studies (CPS) at the Uni- versity of Maryland. Under the dedicated leadership of Professor Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, the Center has engaged in a rich variety of activities ranging from the hard work of developing new courses and cur- ricula to a large number of lectures and exhibits and other events. I am particularly heartened to hear that a number of students have made progress in what will become a minor and ultimately a major. Indeed, enrollments in PERS courses are very robust. As we develop program in Persian Studies at Mary- land, it is, of course, crucial to secure financial support to supplement that provided by the University and the State. In this regard I have been pleased to acknowledge gifts such as the $100,000 endowment received from Dr. Jam- shid Amouzegar in support of an undergraduate schol- arship in Persian studies and $30,000 from Dr. Akbar Ghahary of the Persian Cultural Foundation to support a major international conference on the poet Rumi, as has Mr. Jamshid Ansari of Ahoora Foundation. Mr. Fred Farshay has made several contributions in support of the Center. We are working hard to make possible gifts to
Transcript
PERSIPHONYNewsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
No. 2: Spring 2007
A Spring Song by Sa`di of ShirazTrees are blossoming, nightingales drunk with joy
the world is young again, friends gathered in merry-making.
There as grass is trampled under the feet of joy and so many folks
nobles and the rabble alike rise up to join in the dance
behold my beloved of the assembly, always pulling
at my heart, this day adorned in the loveliest of garbs!
Then here, in the private recesses of my mind, grows a rosebush
before whose stature the world’s tallest cypress falls prostrate
and when you question that cypress, “but you bear no fruit!”
he responds, “oh yes, free spirits often come empty-handed.”
Part of Abbas Kiarostami’s Nowruz gift to CPS. For more visit: http://www.languages.umd.edu/persian -- click on play
the University Library in all areas of Persian Studies and support the Library’s efforts to find funding for necessary expenses such as cataloguing.
Such contributions make exciting new cultural and academic events possible on our campus. In April I was delighted to attend the exhibit “Persian Visions: Contempo-rary Photography from Iran” that was hung in our Art Gal-lery from April 2 to the 29th. Likewise, the splendid series of lectures on the theme of “The Political Culture of Mar-tyrdom in Iran and the Middle East”, delivered by Professor Ali Banuazizi, which attracted very significant audiences from all parts of the campus and the surrounding commu-nity, had been made possible by an endowment established in 2005 by the Persian Heritage Foundation (PHF) in the name of Professor Ehsan Yarshater, acknowledged dean of the Iranian Studies the world over and Editor-in-Chief of the monumental reference work, The Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Finally, it is especially auspicious that the new Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Maryland will be Professor Nariman Farvar-din, currently Dean of the A. James Cark School of Engi-neering. Nariman is one of many members of the faculty, who, like many of our students in a variety of fields, come from a Persian background.
James F. Harris, Dean College of Arts and Humanities
A Message from the DeanIt is a pleasure to write a few lines about the progress made by the Center for Persian Studies (CPS) at the Uni-
versity of Maryland. Under the dedicated leadership of Professor Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, the Center has
engaged in a rich variety of activities ranging from the hard work of developing new courses and cur-
ricula to a large number of lectures and exhibits and other events. I am particularly heartened to hear that a number of students have made
progress in what will become a minor and ultimately a major. Indeed, enrollments in PERS
courses are very robust. As we develop program in Persian Studies at Mary-
land, it is, of course, crucial to secure financial support to supplement that provided by the University and the State. In this regard I have been pleased to acknowledge gifts such as the $100,000 endowment received from Dr. Jam-shid Amouzegar in support of an undergraduate schol-
arship in Persian studies and $30,000 from Dr. Akbar Ghahary of the Persian Cultural Foundation to support a major international conference on the poet Rumi, as
has Mr. Jamshid Ansari of Ahoora Foundation. Mr. Fred Farshay has made several contributions in support of the Center. We are working hard to make possible gifts to
PERSIPHONY No.2: Spring 2007Newsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
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First Undergraduate Scholarship in Persian Studies
We take special delight in announcing the establishment of the Ulrike and Jamshid Amouzegar Endowment for an annual undergraduate scholarship at the University of Maryland. Dr. Amouzegar, a prime minister of Iran in the 1970s, has established this crucial award with the express aim of fostering Persian Studies at the academic level, and we at the Center for Persian Studies (CPS) feel confident that his initiative will encourage other similar award endowments for meritorious undergraduates who may be interested in making Persian Studies a more central part of their curriculum and their career but who may face difficulties in doing so.
As specified in the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Dr. Amouzegar and Dr. Brodie Remington, UMD’s Vice-President for University Relations and President of the UMCP Foundation, the funds in the endowment “shall be used to provide scholarships for freshman and sophomore students who are seeking a double major, major or minor in Persian Studies at the University.” To be eligible, applicants must speak, comprehend, read and write the Persian language at an advanced level.” This would be inclusive of all variants of the language, such as Dari and Tajiki, as well as Persian, the standard language of modern Iran. We encourage all those who may know such candidates to nominate them for this unique award and to spread the word about this type of endowment.
We are deeply grateful to Dr. Amouzegar for having directed his giving toward the University of Maryland and for the confidence he has shown in our Center. Through this scholarship Dr. Amouzegar’s record of service to his country and his well-known personal attachment to the Persian language and Iranian history will inspire those ca-pable and dedicated young men and women who may be interested in being academi-cally trained in the fields of humanities and social sciences, as they relate to Persian-speaking societies and will help keep alive the tradition of teaching and research into the Persian and Iranian worlds in the coming decades and generations.
A Message from Professor Mike Long, Director, SLLC
Since its founding in 2004, the Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland has quickly become a vibrant intellectual and cultural center for Persian-speaking communities in the eastern USA and internationally. Hardly a week goes by without at least one visit by a prominent expert on topics in Persian art, history, lan-guage, literature, music, film, religion, cul-ture or politics. University of Maryland fac-ulty and students, and members of Persian communities in greater Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia and beyond are regularly treated to public lectures, literary readings, art exhibitions, musical recitals, academic conferences and more, always of the high-est quality. The International Conference on the Iranian Constitutional Movement in September, 2006, was an excellent example, drawing leading scholars from several coun-tries. The week-long series of lectures in March, 2007, on ‘Martyrdom in the politi-cal culture of Iran and the Middle East’ by Boston College’s Professor Ali Banuazizi -- the first in the biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series, generously funded by the Persian Heritage Foundation of New York -- was extremely well received by large audi-ences. The upcoming conference (Septem-ber 28-30, 2007) on the Persian mystic poet, Rumi, is another. The atmosphere at these and other events is welcoming and stimulat-ing, and more and more students and their families attend.
Less visible, but also of vital importance, is the steadily growing number and diver-sity of undergraduate courses in Persian language, literature, and culture courses available from CPS faculty. A current ex-ample is ‘Islam in the Modern Age,’ being offered this semester by Dr. Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi. This dimension of CPS’ activities enriches the college experiences and lives of hundreds of Persian heritage and non-heri-tage students.
Much of the credit for CPS’ rapid success goes to its founding Director, Professor Ah-mad Karimi-Hakkak. His reputation as one of the foremost Persian literary scholars alive today has helped to attract eminent art-ists and scholars from diverse fields to Col-lege Park. The strong personal and financial
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support of prominent Persian philanthropic foundations and Persian community mem-bers has made many of the events possible.
More information about the CPS, its ac-tivities, faculty and staff, are to be found in this, the second issue of the Center’s News-letter, Persiphony. On behalf of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, I look forward to many more.
Mike LongProfessor of SLA, and Director, SLLC
As part of the festivities marking the 150th anniversary of the University of Maryland and the 45th anniversary of the Peace Corps, and to welcome Nowruz and spring, the CPS hosted a celebration at the UMD’s Alumni Center on March 29, 2006. The event recognized and honored the Peace Corps and the volunteers who served in Iran and Afghanistan in the past four decades. Established by President John F. Kennedy on March 1, 1961, the Peace Corps boasts of more than 900 UMD graduates among its past volunteers who have served in countries around the world. For 2006, the University ranked number 15 among comparably sized universities in sending 53 graduates into Peace Corps service.
The March 29 event began at 2 p.m. in the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center and featured a bazaar and several speakers discussing cultural exchanges between the Persian diaspora and the region. About 200 guests, mostly UMD students and mem-bers of the Iranian American community learned about the Peace Corps from former volunteers who spoke of their experience as volunteers and answered questions re-garding their countries of service. Peace Corps Deputy Director Jody Olsen, her-self a peace corps volunteer and a former President of the UMD Alumni Association, welcomed the featured speakers, includ-ing former ambassador John Limbert, Mr. James and Mrs. Pamela McCloud, and Mr. Peter Russell. Jody Olsen then presented
a certificate of appreciation to the CPS in recognition of its services to the university and the communities surrounding it and for its contribution to bringing about mutual understanding among cultures and countries in critical times such as we live in. The event culminated in a reception where President Mote spoke about the partnership of UMD and Peace Corps as well as the establish-ment in 2004 of the Center for Persian Studies at UMD.
The CPS would like to thank President Mote, Peace Corps Deputy Director Ms. Jody Olsen and her colleagues Ms. Lynn Kneedler and Mr. Bartel Kendrick. We also appreciate the help we received from our
Peace Corps, the UMD and the CPS: A Celebration
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colleagues, particularly Mr. Ali Abasi and Ms. Nahal Akbari, as well as our wonderful community volunteers, among them Mr. and Mrs. Mohammad and Najmieh Bat-manglij, Firoozeh Dianat, Fereshteh Darya, Hirad Dinavari, Manzar Rassouli, Ahmad Nadimi, Mansoureh Pirnia, Nikoo Paydar and Narges Bajogli. Above all, we express our gratitude to all the speakers who shed light on the activities of the Peace Corps, on the possibilities of cultural cooperation between the Persian world and the United States NGO community, and who raised the interest of UMD students in the spirit of selfless service that has been a hallmark of the Peace Corps for over forty years.
UMD President Dr. C. Dan Mote shares a laugh with Peace Corps Deputy Director Jody Olsen and Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak
PERSIPHONY No.2: Spring 2007Newsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
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Lifetime Achievement Award for Afghan Poet
Mr. Raziq Faani, esteemed poet of Af-ghanistan now living in California, received a much deserved recognition for his ser-vices to Afghan society and Dari literature on Saturday, December 2, 2006. The event, which brought together about 200 expatri-ate members of the Afghani-American community living in the DC urban area, was organized and hosted by Afghan Communi-cator (AC) of New York [www.afghancom-municator.com], a non-profit organization with the mission to highlight Afghan culture and civilization.
AC Director Mr. Rameen Mushrif opened the meeting by stressing the im-portance of poetry in Afghan culture and recounting the career of Ostad Faani. CPS Director also spoke at the meeting on the Centrality of Afghanistan to the Persian-speaking world and therefore to the UMD’s Center for Persian Studies. On hand were several luminaries of the Afghan commu-nity abroad, including renowned poet Wasif Bakhtari, Professor Rawan-Farhadi, Mr. La-tif Nazemi, and Mr. Fourmuli.
It was with great regret that we learned of the passing of Faani a few months later on Sunday April 22, 2007 in San Diego, Cali-fornia. We extend our condolences to our Afghan students and community members, and take solace in the assurance that Ostad Faani’s place is in the pantheon of Persian poets is secure and that his work will be studied by future generations of Afghans and other Persian speakers and students of Persian literature around the world.
New CPS Colleagues
Dr. Ahmad Kazemi MoussaviLecturer, Islamic StudiesDr. Ahmad Kazemi
Moussavi joined the CPS last fall as lecturer in Persian Studies. From 1992 to 2005 he was professor of Islamic law and Persian language at the International Islamic University of Malaysia and Fatih University of Turkey. Born and educated in Iran, Dr. Kazemi received his bachelor’s degree in law from Tehran Uni-versity and served as a judge for five years before transferring to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1968. As a Diplomat, Dr. Kazemi traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East.
In 1980, Dr. Kazemi joined McGill Uni-versity where he got his Ph.D. in “Islamic Institutions” in 1991. He has taught at McGill University and Tehran University for many years and is the author of Religious Authority in Shi’ite Islam (1996), Shi’ite Ulama and Political Power (2004) and Facing One Qi-blah(2005). He has published more than 50 scholarly articles in academic and cultural journals. Dr. Kazemi has a passion for Sufi music and culture and enjoys a good game of chess.
Mr. Mohamad Es-mailiLecturer, Persian
LanguageMr. Mohamad Esmaili joined the CPS last fall as lecturer in charge of Persian language teaching. He holds two Master’s Degrees in Spanish Linguistics and Spanish Literature from Georgetown Uni-versity and Middlebury College, respectively, and is fluent in Persian, English, Spanish and French. His fields of interest and re-search are applied linguistics and phonology.
Mr. Esmaili currently teaches Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced level Persian courses at the CPS, and has taught for sev-
eral years at Georgetown University, Mid-dlebury College and Catholic University of America, where he was chosen as Instruc-tor of the Year in 2005-2006. He has also taught Persian at the Middle East Institute and the Diplomatic Language Service. Mr. Esmaili has traveled in Europe and South America.
Mohamad’s passion is learning foreign languages, teaching, and traveling.
He also enjoys going to museums, watch-ing foreign movies, and soccer. His hobbies are playing tennis, backgammon and bacci ball; his favorite Spanish wine and cheese are Tempranillo and Manchego.
Sahar AllamezadeResearch AssistantSahar Allamezade was born and educated in Iran and lived there until the age of 18. She moved to the University of Maryland in 2006 as a graduate student of Comparaitve Literautre and a Reseach Assistant at the CPS. In June 2002 she obtained her Master’s degree in Victorian Literature from Buckingham Uni-versity and was admitted to the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the autumn of 2003.
After obtaining her Master’s degree Sahar got a job in a law firm in London dealing with hundreds of Iranian immigrants and asylum seekers. Living in London provided Sahar with the opportunity and the pos-sibility to indulge herself in her favorite art form which is the theater and the ballet. She has also been an active member of the In-stitute of Contemporary Arts in London.
Her passion for Persian literature has guided her steps from an early age when she won the second place national award for young writers in Iran. She is determined to continue studying in that field and is hopeful that completing her studies might be considered as a small contribution to a better understanding of the culture and lit-erature of Iran.
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A Tale of Two VisitsOver the past year,
renowned Iranian satirist and political commentator Seyed Ebrahimn Nabavi has paid two visits to the CPS, first on April 20th, the second on November
11th. Nabavi first came to the attention of Iranian readers in the 1990s when he joined the reform movement and aimed his devastating satires at hard-line Iranian politi-cians. Driven into exile in 2001, he has now added the Iranian expatriate community to the objects of his satire, often taking the Iranian-American community to task with great hilarity and provoking much laughter and more thought in our heritage students. Of his own background and education, he says: “my father was a lackey of the old re-gime and I was arrested and incarcerated on charges of collaborating with him!”
Iranian Scholar of Islamic Texts at the UMD
On Friday, February 2, 2007 distinguished literary scholar and textualist Dr. Nasrollah Pourjavady de-livered two lectures at the
CPS, one in English, the other in Persian. Titled “Literary Contests in Persian Litera-ture: a Forgotten Genre,” and “zaban-e hal dar adabiyyat-e farsi” dealt with an impor-tant but little noted genre in classical Persian literature where natural or inanimate ob-jects, such as the sun and the moon, spring and autumn, or heart and head, debate one another on their merits, importance or benefits to prove their superiority over their interlocutor.
Over the last three decades or so, Dr. Pourjavady, perhaps the most prolific schol-ar-editor of Sufism and Sufi literature in Persian, has brought numerous old Persian manuscripts to the attention of the literary community by editing and publishing them in accurate and appealing editions. He has also served as editor-in-chief of two leading post-revolution scholarly Journals in Iran, Nashr-e Danesh and Ma`aref.
Gearing up to Recognize Undergraduate Achievements
At CPS, we are getting ready to award the first annual Hossein Amirsaleh student es-say award, designed to recognize outstand-ing scholarship by UMD undergraduates. Instituted in 2005 with an endowment from the Amirsaleh family in the name of Iranian-American industrialist and philan-thropist Mr. Hossein Amirsaleh, this annual award consists of a citation and a monetary prize of $1,000. At this time, six papers have been submitted for consideration by various UMD professors and we are looking forward to a richer crop of first-rate papers coming out of this semester’s course of-ferings. SLLC Director Professor Michael Long will appoint the 2007 committee in May and we will announce the award in June. We encourage all UMD undergradu-ates taking the growing number of courses related wholly or in substantial part to the modern countries of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, as well as Iranian and Persian-speaking diaspora communities, to acquaint themselves with this unique and prestigious opportunity for early recognition as budding scholars on our campus. Please check the CPS web site at http://www.languages.umd.edu/persian/Academic_Philantrophy.php
The Greater Washington D.C. area has benefited greatly by the inagura-tion of the academic center at the University of Maryland College Park, the Center for Persian Studies. The center has a well rounded staff including friendly and approachable professors specializing in Persian Literature, linguistics, and religious and cultural studies, whom both stu-dents and interested individuals in the community can take advantage of. I am a German Studies Major in my junior year, and I began tak-ing classes offered by the Persian Center in an attempt to discover more about the Persian Culture. Indeed this is a complex undertak-ing for which the Persian Center has become my home base. The center and its staff have been a resource for both heritage and non heritage students with links to community discussions, afternoon conversa-tions with professors, fun cultural activities, to other local research and educational support centers, and it has hosted significant lectures which have helped to shed light onto some of the hot social and political con-cepts of the world-wide Persian Community. Its presence at the University of Maryland has added to my personal and educational ex-perience here, and I look forward to enjoying more classes and activities they will offer during my final year at the university.
Robert StewartPersian Language Undergraduate
PERSIPHONY No.2: Spring 2007Newsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
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Ezzat Goushegir, Iranian play-wright, fiction writer, poet and critic, is Writer-in-Residence for Spring Semester 2007 at the University of Maryland’s Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House. The Writers’ House [www.writershouse.umd.edu], a unique living-and-learning program that offers students a literary center for the study of creative writing across cultures and languages, shares the UMD’s Dorchester Hall with an-other living-and-learning program called Global Communities [www.globalcommunities.umd.edu]. With classrooms, lecture spaces, and staff offices housed under the same roof, the program allows UMD students to hone their skills through peer revising workshops, colloquia, and lectures led by visiting writers. The program’s goal is to create a strong writing com-munity on the College Park campus; it is open to all majors, freshman to senior.
Goushegir, who lives and works in Chicago and divides her time between writing and teaching at DePaul University, Illinois, has pub-lished four works in Persian and two plays in English. Most recently, her play “Medea was Born in Fallujah” was published in Witness Magazine (2006). As part of her contract at the
University of Maryland, Goushegir teaches a creative writing course to a group of undergraduate students and leads weekly discussion sessions on literature with all interested in-dividuals and groups on the UMCP campus.
Last February the Writers’ House hosted a reception and reading by Goushegir in Dorchester Hall. This was an electrifying event, “a great reading,” according to Program Di-rector Johnna Schmidt. In a mes-sage to Goushegir, Schmidt wrote: “I really appreciated the way you shaped the reading, with something of a slow, melancholic start, then the genre busting insert of the play-with-in-the-novel (that was an extraordi-nary moment - so unexpected in the context of these readings) and then the hysterical imagined sex scene at the end ... so funny. It was masterful how you controlled pacing and mood throughout the reading”.
Goushegir was born in Iran and
received her bachelor’s degree in playwriting and dramatic literature from College of Dramatic Arts in Tehran. She immigrated to the United States in 1986 where she re-ceived her MFA from the University of Iowa. In 1990 she was a Fellow
Iranian is Writer-in-Residence at UMD’s Writers’ House
Writer in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and in 1992 she was invited to the Second Conference of International Women Playwrights in Canada. In addition to plays, her work includes two collec-tions of short stories, And Suddenly the Panther Cried: Woman (2001) and The Woman, the Room, and Love (2004). Her other works include Migration in the Sun, a collection of poems, and Metamorphosis and Maryam’s Pregnancy (2005), two plays in a single volume.
Goushegir’s plays have been pro-duced by a variety of theater compa-nies and two of her plays, Maryam’s Pregnancy and Behind the Curtains, have won important awards, such as a Richard Maibaum Award a Norman Felton Award. Goushegir is also a regular contributor to literary journals and her writing has appeared in pub-lications in Iran, France, Germany, and Canada.
For more on Ezzat Goushegir visit: www.ezzatgoushegir.com.
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UMD Students Discuss the CPSBy Roxana Hadadi
When senior finance major Behrad Behbahani applied to the University of Maryland four years ago, he expected to undertake a schedule full of classes about business policy and investments. But to-ward the end of his freshman year, when he heard the university would be opening the Center for Persian Studies – and that it would be headed by renowned Persian aca-demic Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak – Behba-hani jumped at the first chance to diversify his course load. “I could not wait to register for a Persian class,” Behbahani explained. “I was very happy hearing the news, because I felt it would be another foothold that Irani-ans would have in the community.”
Both for Persian students like Behbahani and non-Persians alike, the Center for Per-sian Studies (CPS), during its nearly three years of existence, has become a cultural resource unlike any other at the university. A welcoming environment, an engrossing curriculum and engaging professors, all combine to make CPS a place where all stu-dents can receive an intriguing introduction to Persian culture – and feel at home while doing it, students said. Created in fall 2004, the CPS is the first full-fledged academic center focused on the Persian-speaking cul-tures in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia; however, the center also includes the study of the Persian-speaking diaspora in other communities around the world.
According to CPS’s mission statement, the Center has three goals: to establish an academic program in Persian language and literature; to enhance the capacity of the university to examine Persian-speaking cul-tures; and to strengthen the relationships between the university and surrounding communities. To meet these goals, CPS of-fers a wide variety of courses on everything from Persian literature (such as PERS452: Modern Persian Literature) to Iranian histo-ry (such as PERS251: Modern Iran) to a full slate of Persian-language courses, compris-ing six levels of Persian, Elementary PERS 101 and 102, Intermediate 201 and 202, and Advanced PERS 301 and 302.
Behbahani, who has taken six classes offered by CPS during his time at the uni-versity, said each course was demanding aca-demically, but incredibly rewarding. “I was interested in taking these classes because I have a great interest in my native culture and always want to know as much as I can about it,” Behbahani explained. “I have found every CPS class that I have taken absolutely interesting; all my classes but one have been taught by Dr. Karimi himself and the vast amounts of knowledge the profes-sors have make the classes so enjoyable. I definitely have learned a lot from these classes, and they have really added to my education here at this university.”
Sophomore Art History and French ma-jor Neda Khalili agreed with Behbahani. “I have taken two CPS classes, and I was interested in taking the classes for self-en-richment and a closer connection to my background,” she said. “I most certainly find the classes, the teaching material, and the professors engaging, and I think that some of the Persian classes I have taken are some of the best classes I have been in at Maryland.”
Another advantage to the courses offered by CPS is the close, communal atmosphere, said junior government and politics and criminology and criminal justice major Mandana Yousefi. “Because the classes are so small, I feel like in CPS I am getting a completely different education than that of Maryland’s as a whole,” Yousefi said. “With-in your first week of the semester, you meet the head of the Center. I immediately felt the passion for teaching CPS had. … Per-sian class, as difficult as it can be, is worth it, because they make it fun.”
But the most important and beneficial aspect of CPS, students said, is the diversity it adds to the university community – and the home away from home it provides for Persian students. “I think the CPS has made more people on campus aware of the Ira-nian community; moreover it has made the campus more cultured as a result of its nu-merous lectures, conferences, even comedy shows that focus on all the different aspects of Persian culture,” Behbahani said. Simi-larly, Khalili said the CPS gives non-Persian students the opportunity to learn more about an area of the world they may not be familiar with.
“I feel like the CPS adds to the whole
diversity element of the school; that people are opening up and learning about a differ-ent culture than what has traditionally been studied, such as French, Spanish, Chinese, or Italian culture,” she said. “And by doing this, we are slowly but steadily building a more open-minded society.
Junior history major Adam Fried, who applied to the university as a transfer stu-dent mainly for the opportunity to enroll in courses offered by CPS, agreed with both Behbahani and Khalili. “CPS adds a great deal to UMD’s cultural environment,” he explained. “It provides a venue for students to actually learn about an area of the world that is often misunderstood and misrep-resented in various forms. CPS is a great place that provides students, both Persian and not, with an environment to learn about Iran and its history as well as to meet other students with similar interests.”
Not only does CPS give non-Persian students the opportunity to learn about the subject at hand, but it also provides Persian students with a cultural center – a sort of home away from home – whose relevance is undeniable and irreplaceable, Yousefi said. “I know [CPS] strengthened my identity in this school,” she said. “After taking courses in CPS, I no longer feel as someone who just checks off the ‘other’ box for race. Latin students have the Spanish Language Program, Jewish students have the Jew-ish Center, and so on. They all have places whose sole purpose is to promote knowl-edge of their culture. Now that I have that, I feel like I finally belong at a school.”
Roxana Hadadisophomore journalism and sociology major
PERSIPHONY No.2: Spring 2007Newsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
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On the occasion of the Centenary of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and to mark the 150 Anniversary of the University of Maryland, the International Conference on the Iranian Constitutional Movement was held September 21-24, 2006. Organized and hosted by the Center for Persian Studies (CPS) and supported by a number of organizations active in the US, including the Iranian American Bar Association, the Ahoora Foundation, the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, and the Persian Cultural Foundation, the gathering constituted the first Iran-related academic event on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park. It brought together over 20 leading historians working on Ira-nian and Middle-Eastern Studies in various
American, Canadian and European Univer-sities, including Yale, Columbia, NYU, Stan-ford, and the University of Toronto.
The Conference opened Thursday night with a reception hosted by Dean Nariman Farvardin of the UMD’s Clark School of Engineering and Mrs. Hoveida Farvardin. A small number of community leaders and UMD’s Iranian-American faculty, staff and students met the participants who had who had traveled from near and far to participate in this scholarly event. In welcoming the guests, both Dean Farvardin and ARHU’s Dean James F. Harris stressed the timeliness of the gathering and thanked the CPS for organizing the Conference. The academic portion of the conference got underway with a message from President C. D. Mote.
In it, the UMCP President also emphasized the timeliness and crucial importance of such gatherings, and thanked the College of Arts and Humanities, the School of Lan-guages, Literatures, and Cultures, and the CPS. Dean Harris and SLLC Director Pro-fessor Michael Long also spoke at the open-ing ceremonies, welcoming the guests and wishing the participating scholars success in their deliberations.
The Conference had been conceptualized as a forum for the exchange of ideas among three generations of active scholars, not just on the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, but also, in light of recent developments in Iran and the Middle-East, as a way of foregrounding contemporary Iran’s continu-ing pursuit of constitutionalism and the establishment of the rule of law. This was reflected in the thematic foci of the confer-ence sessions, entitled “Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: A One Hundred Year Retro-spective,” “Reporting, Remembering and Refashioning the Revolution,” “Conceptual-izing, Interpreting and Implementation of Rights and Powers under the Constitution,” and “The Constitutional Revolution: Cross-Border Influences and Comparative Per-spectives.” A total of 20 scholarly presenta-tions addressed these broad thematic areas, shedding light on many hitherto unexplored aspects of Iran’s history in the past one hundred years. Negotiations are underway to determine the feasibility of publishing the conference proceeding as part of a pub-lication series envisioned by the CPS.
The Iranian Constitutional Movement ConferenceA First-Ever Iran-related International Gathering at UMCP
Because of the intimate and intricate connections between the Iranian Constitu-tional Movement and the modern tradition in Persian literature, and due to the pres-ence of many literary figures and scholars of Persian fiction, a special session had been envisioned to focus on relationships between literature and history. Entitled “Fictionalizing History,” this session, held on Saturday afternoon, featured internation-ally recognized Iranian novelist Shahrnush Parsipur, whose works have been translated widely into English and form part of the curriculum in many American universities, including UMCP. The well-attended ses-sion, envisioned as an “In conversation” session, proved particularly popular with UMCP faculty and students. It brought considerable interest to the epistemological and pedagogical implications of approach-ing history through works of fiction and the diverse ways in which imaginative authors incorporate themes and events of local, na-tional or international history in their work. Because film plays an increasingly important part in the university classroom, an episode of Parsipur’s electrifying novella Women without Men was also screened and became an integral part of the ensuing conversation. Directed by celebrated Iranian-American artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat, “Zarrin” features a daring portrayal of life in a Teh-ran brothel in the mid-twentieth century.
A gala banquet celebrating Iran’s Consti-tutional Revolution and the constitutional-ist movements it has spawned was held in conjunction with the conference on Friday night. About 200 guests, consisting of
notable community leaders and invited scholars, came together with UMCP faculty, staff and students interested in Iranian and Middle-Eastern Studies. The guests were treated to a sit-down dinner and a musical performance by HAALE, an Iranian-Ameri-can musician and vocalist, whose music is a hybrid of traditional and folk music of Per-sia and a range of contemporary American musical traditions, including jazz, rock and psychedelic. Sponsored in part by members of the audience, the banquet was attended by Dean Farvardin and Dean Harris, as well as such prominent scholars as Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of the monumental Encyclopaedia Iranica, and noted Iranian-American industrialist Dr. Akbar Ghahary.
A special feature of the Conference was a photo exhibition titled “Once upon A Time Iran.” Sponsored by the Persian
Cultural Foundation of New Jersey, this constitutional era photo exhibition went a long way in bringing alive Iranian life at the beginning of Iranian modernity for the new generations of Iranians, among them many members of UMCP’s Iranian Stu-dents’ Foundation and the Persian Cluster at the Language House. In addition, several area publishers and booksellers presented their holdings, among them many of the books authored by scholars presenting at the conference. Lively author-meets-reader encounters and the ensuing book-signing rituals brought aspiring students into direct contact and conversation with the authors whose works have been a staple of courses since the establishment of the CPS at the University of Maryland. Finally, several area non-profits, such as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) [www.niacouncil.org] and the Children of Persia [www.child-renofpersia.org], displayed their literature to conference participants.
In addition to all its impressive scholarly implications, the Conference on the Iranian Constitutional Movement demonstrated the profound synergies that can result from university-community partnerships. In this case, it provided reasonable assurances that the CPS will continue to enjoy substantial and significant community support in its ac-tivities for years to come. And as President Mote noted in his message, the conference went a long way toward showing that “The University of Maryland continues to serve as a hub of educational and scholarly activ-ity in the State of Maryland and the greater Washington D.C. area.”
Iraninan-American Singer, Haale, Performing with her Bandwww.haale.com
Professor Abbas Amanat speaking on “Memory and Amnesia in the Historiography of the Constitutional Revolution”
PERSIPHONY No.2: Spring 2007Newsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
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Podcasting Persian in the heart of the US
By Seyed Jazayeri
The University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) is among the very few uni-versities in the U.S. that has a Persian radio channel. Called Radio College Park, [www.radiocp.com]. It is run by a group of Ira-nian students at the university.
RCP is an online radio service – also re-ferred to as podcast. It is a method for de-livering audio files on the Internet. Podcasts can be easily downloaded to computers or portable mp3 players.
A group of graduate students of the uni-versity initiated the idea of having an online radio nearly two years ago. Afshin Sepehri, the co-founder of RCP and a university alumnus, says the group was looking for a medium through which they could reach the Iranian community at the university and thought that an online radio was the best medium for linking university students and Persian-speaking audiences around the world.
Soon the idea found its way to other Iranian graduate students and their student group, the Iranian Graduate Students Foun-dation (IGSF), www.igsfumd.org, lent its support to the idea. RCP broadcast its first program on June 24, 2005. Since then, the RCP has produced more than 100 audio programs.
Sepehri and his group used very basic and minimal equipments to record and prepare the programs. All they needed was a laptop, some microphones and a sound-editing software package. RCP’s weekly programs are usually about 40 minutes long and cover a variety of topics about culture, art and society, with an emphasis on Iranian cul-
The International Conference on RumiSeptember 28-30, 2007
With help from the Persian Cultural Foundation, www.persiancultural.org, and the Ahoora Foundation, the CPS has been able to secure substantial funding to hold an International Conference on the Persian mystic poet, Jalal ad-Din Balkhi, known in the West as Rumi. The Conference, which will be held September 28-30, 2007 on the campus of the University of Maryland, has been envisioned as an arena to explore Rumi’s poetry and vision, as well as his con-tinued relevance to our world.
Based on a centuries-old tradition of mysticism within the intellectual currents of the Persian-speaking world, Rumi developed a transcendental vision of the human condi-tion that has through the centuries grown far and wide beyond his birthplace, environ-ment and native language. In the past thirty years or so, his poetry and his vision have taken the United States and other Western cultures by storm. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Orga-nization (UNESCO) has declared 2007, the 800th anniversary of the poet’s birth, as the International Rumi Year.
The Conference will bring together about 20 leading Rumi scholars and notable artists from all over the world. It will be themati-cally and historically organized, with an em-phasis on Rumi as a poet and his two major works, The Spiritual Couplets and The Divan, as its twin focal points. Thus, the first ses-sion, which will explore the background to Rumi by examining the historical growth of mystical visions within the intellectual cur-rents of his age, will be followed by several sessions on Rumi’s life and works, and will end in an exploration of his ideas in mod-ern times.
The Conference will be conducted in English, except in the artistic events slated for the evening hours and a single panel where textual scholars will discuss the his-tory and social life of Rumi’s works and his impact through the many generations of
Persian-speaking readers in Iran, Afghani-stan, Central Asia, and elsewhere. Where Rumi’s poetry is recited, English transla-tions will be provided for the benefit of the audience. Funding permitting, Conference proceedings will be published subsequently, either in entirety or in substantial part.
Judaeo-Iranica Conference at the UMD, Fall 2008
An international interdisciplinary Confer-ence is envisioned for fall 2008, sponsored and organized jointly be the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for Persian Studies (CPS). The Conference, convened by Dr. Houman Sarshar, a well-known authority on the Jews of the Iranian world, will bring together scholars from a broad range of academic fields of inquiry to explore the roots of Jewish presence in that world and what it means to be Jewish-Iranian in the modern world.
With an express purpose of expanding the existing boundaries of Jewish-Iranian studies, the Conference will offer a context that transcends the limitations of specific themes or particular historical periods. As such, the Conference will welcome studies on previously unexamined or under-ex-plored historical and cultural contributions of Iranian Jewry to Persian and/or Jewish cultures; inquiries pertaining to the concept of religious purity (tahārat) and impurity (nejāsat), forced or voluntary conversions, and considerations of the role of Iranian Jews in 20th-century Iran will be particularly welcome, as will explorations of contempo-rary Iran-Israel relations.
The aim of this academic gathering will be to fill some of the lingering gaps in our knowledge about Iranian Jewry, ultimately to enrich both fields of Iranian and Jewish studies. Funding permitting, Conference proceeding will be published in a volume edited by the convener. All presentations will be in English. More information will be posted in October 2007 on the web sites of the Center for Persian Studies and of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies at [www.jewishstudies.umd.edu].
Dr. Ali Banuazizi, Professor of Social Psychology at Boston College and former MESA President, was first Ehsan Yarshater lecturer in Persian studies at the University of Maryland. In a fascinating series of three lectures in English with one summative one in Persian, given over a week-long stay, he shed much-needed light on an imperfectly understood human impulse that has given rise to a vexing issue in our world.
The prestigious biennial lecture series has been made possible by a generous endow-ment established by he Persian Heritage Foundation of New York in honor of the most celebrated living scholar of Iranian Studies in the world. The event brought to the UMCP campus an outstanding expert in an area of Persian, Iranian and Islamic studies relevant to current issues of interna-tional interest for a week-long stay and a series of aca-demic lectures in English and one lecture in Persian for the benefit of the Persian-speak-ing communi-ty in the area. In addition, Dr. Banu-azizi held a
series of very fruitful meetings with UMCP faculty and students, particularly graduate students in the emerging area of expertise on our campus, as well as experts from the greater urban community surrounding the University.
Dr. Banuazizi’s lectures placed this topic of intense relevance in its various religious and historical contexts. The three lectures, held in the week of March 5-9, 2007, ex-plored the theological meanings of martyr-dom in the sacred traditions of Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. On that basis, Professor Banuazizi argued that the current surge of jihadi movements in many parts of the Muslim world rep-resents the most extreme exploitation of the concepts of martyrdom and jihad for purely political objectives under a pietistic, puritanical Islamic guise. The ready resort to terrorist tactics by groups of modern-day assassins has done incalculable damage to the contemporary image of Islam around the globe, he concluded. This, he said, dem-onstrates the dangers, in the extreme, of using religion as political ideology.
By examining the social, cultural, and psychological dynamics through which martyrdom acquires its symbolic power, the lectures provided a rich backdrop that high-lighted the fluidity of the concept as well as the fascinating diversity of the interpretive acts it has undergone through an eventful history of many millennia. The result was a better understanding of a textured tapestry of religious thought amazingly rich, colorful and layered. The analysis of some of the ways in which the powerful symbolism of martyrdom has been used to advance politi-cal and social objectives across time and space proved nothing short of an eye-open-ing intellectual tour-de-force. For a synopsis of the lectures, visit this link: http://www.languages.umd.edu/persian/pdfs/Outline of Banuazizi Lectures.pdf
First Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series Marks a First for UMCP
Martyrdom in the Political Cultures of Iran and the Middle East
ture. The radio has listeners from different parts of the world, most notably the North America and Iran.
The costs associated with production of an online radio are totally covered by the Iranian students of the university who work for RCP voluntarily, according to RCP’s administrators. Students who contribute to RCP spend their free time to produce re-markable programs for the station. Nassim Abdi, an education major and one of the RCP’s contributors, says the voluntary activ-ity is an opportunity for Iranian students to come together in common purpose. In addition to weekly audio programs, other contents such as photo features and audio books are available on the RCP website, says Shabnam Tafreshi, a computer science graduate student and a member of RCP.
According to RCP administrators, the audio-books section is a very popular part of the website where Internet users can find audio files of a variety of books read in the Persian language. Since its establish-ment, RCP has continued to provide weekly programs without interruption and is con-sidered the oldest Persian podcast on the Internet. RCP has also drawn significant amounts of attention from other Persian Media around the world. According to an online survey conducted last year by the In-ternet magazine 7-Sang, http://www.7sang.com/languages/english, RCP was the sec-ond best Persian podcast on the Internet. Other news organizations also frequently cover programs produced by RCP.
The RCP’s website has more than 1000 listeners for every weekly radio program and more than 1700 listeners for every audio book program.
Seyed Jazayeri, Senior Stu-dent of Journalism
Continued from page 8
PERSIPHONY No.2: Spring 2007Newsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
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Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of The Iranian Diaspora
The CPS hosted a book-reading and signing event Thursday, Novem-ber 2, 2006 at UMD’s Atrium Hall in the Stamp Student Union. Dr. Persis Karim, associate profes-
sor of English and comparative literature at San Jose State University, and contribut-ing author and editor of Let me tell you where I’ve been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora gave a talk and read selections from the book and shared the experience of exilic existence and diasporic expression with an enthusiastic audience of 100, mostly second generation Iranian-Americans. As the latest among a small but growing corpus of expa-triate Iranian writing in English, the book has had a resounding success in bringing to light an aspect of creative writing largely un-known to those outside the community of Persian-speaking expatiates.
Karim began by reading poems in which fruits and vegetables associated with Ira-nian culture, such as pomegranates and eggplants, assume a cultural significance way beyond the culinary delight they are known for. She then discussed some of the themes the book treats, gender inequi-ties, sibling rivalries, and intergenerational relations, among many others. Literature, she argued, becomes a vehicle for express-ing much tension that cannot be resolved either within exiled communities or between them and the larger societies that surround them. She concluded that the over 50 po-ets, fiction writers and essayists represented in this collection expand our view of the up-and-coming Iranians with hyphenated identities, known internally as “the second generation”. Dr. Karim’s talk was received warmly, especially where she spoke about the power of literature to allow ways of perceiving cultural difference that lie beyond the stereotypes through which we often see cultures different from our own.
Let me Tell You Where I’ve Been is a welcome addition to a growing corpus of émigré literature in America as well, as the writers here make palpable the challenges of inte-
gration and communication this generation faces. In the words of one reviewer, “One writes about a woman’s relationship with her chador. Another remembers her desire, as a young girl, to distance herself from the “old-world values” espoused by her parents. A woman who sought refuge in Germany
The Foundation for Iranian Studies, Bethesda, MD The Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington, DC The Persian Heritage Foundation, New YorkThe Persian Cultural Foundation, Clifton, NJThe ILEX Foundation, Boston, MA The Iranian American Bar AssociationRoshan Cultural Heritage Institute, Washington, DC
Dr. and Mrs. Gholamreza and Mahnaz Afkhami Dr. Cyrus Amir-Mokri, Esq., Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, LLP, New York Mr. and Mrs. Mahyar Amirsaleh, Group USA, Secaucus, NJ H.E. Dr. Jamshid Amouzegar, Chevy Chase, MD Mr. Jamshid Ansari, Ahoora Foundation, Plano, Texas Professor Arjang Assad, Robert H. Smith School of Business, UMDProfessor Shaul Bakhash, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Mr. and Mrs. Saeed and Fereshteh Darya, Potomac, MD Professor Olga M. Davidson and Prof. Gregory Nagy, Harvard University Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC Mr. Fred Farshay, Stanley Martin Commercial, Bethesda, MD Dean Nariman and Mrs. Hoveida Farvardin, A. James Clark School of Engineering, UMD Dr. Akbar Ghahary, President of Safascorp, Garfield, NJ Ms. Noosheen Hashemi, The H.A.N.D. Foundation, Menlo Park, CA Mr. and Mrs. Babak Hoghooghi, Potomac, MD Mr and Mrs. Reza and Fariba Jahanbani Ms. Mona Khademi, Washington, DC Mr. Abbas Kiarostami, Tehran, IranMr. Fred Korangy, President, logicTree, Bowie, MD Mr. and Mrs. Hassanali and Taraneh Mehran, Potomac, MD Dr. Elahe Mir-Djalali, Washington, DC Ms. Shirin Neshat, New YorkProfessor Ehsan Yarshater, The Encyclopaedia Iranica, New York, NY Special Thanks to the Following UMCP Organizations and Colleagues: The Art Gallery at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business The Iranian Students’ Foundation (ISF) The Iranian Graduate Students’ Foundation (IGSF) Radio College Park The Persian Cluster at the UMD’s Language House
Dr. Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi, Mr. Mohammad Esmaili, Mr. Ali Abasi, Ms. Nahal Akbari, Mr. Seyed Ahmadabadi, Mr. Kiavash Parvan, Ms. Anousha Shahsavari, Ms. Sahar Allamezade, Ms. Nasim Abdi-Dezfooli, Ms. Nazanin Khavari, Mr. Seyed Jazayeri, Ms. Roxana Hadadi
conveys the longing she felt to return to her birthplace by detailing a market scene and how the taste of raw walnuts made her feel at home again.” Especial thanks are due to the speaker and to our colleague Nahal Ak-bari for effectively organizing this event.
The Center for Persian Studies acknowledges with thanks the support and assistance of the following charitable organizations and community leaders:
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Iran’s leading investigative journalist and world-famous oppositional figure Akbar Ganji visited the University of Maryland on March 12, 2007. The visit, the result of joint sponsorship by CPS and the Center for International Business Education and Re-search (CIBER) at the University of Mary-land’s prestigious Robert H. Smith School of Business, was a first for the University. It was also the first time Mr. Ganji sat for a free-wheeling, unscripted exchange with a group of leading community members and intellectuals residing in the area.
Author of several books, including the best-selling Dungeon of Ghosts, in which he implicates former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and other leading con-servative figures in the “serial murders” of five writers and intellectuals in 1998, Ganji opened the meeting with a 15-minute state-ment before giving the floor over to com-ments and questions from the audience. A dozen individuals from among an audience of over 150 asked questions, expressed their political views and shared their concerns with the speaker and each other.
Mr. Ganji, who as a young man supported the Islamic revolution and entered the ranks
Leading Political Dissident Visits UMDFor me, the Center for Persian Studies has been the heart and soul of my experience here at the University of Maryland. Soon after beginning my undergraduate studies in 2003, I discovered a deep love for Iran and its culture. At that time, however, the university offered very few courses on the Middle East in general and none focusing specifically on Iran. I had begun looking to transfer colleges when the creation of the Center for Persian Studies was announced in the spring of 2004. Over the past three years, the Center has been an invaluable resource for me. I was fortunate enough to find a wonderful friend and men-tor in the director, Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hak-kak. With his encouragement I began study-ing the Persian language and its literature in addition to Iran’s history and culture. My interest has only grown over time, and this fall I will begin pursuing my Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies.
Mila JohnsCPS Alumni
Base Line of Courses Offered by CPSIn partial fulfillment of the vision enunciated for the Center for Persian Studies (CPS), as we approach the end of our third year, we have
established a base line of the courses offered regularly every academic year in the foreseeable future. All additional courses may come about as the Persian Studies major makes its way through the various university committees, as the UMD expands its present curriculum, or as more funding becomes available, either as part of the envisioned internationalization of UMD or through external funding.
A total of twelve courses will be offered regularly each year, eleven with the PERS rubrics and one with the SLLC rubric, as described below. These include six Persian language courses where the principal learning object is the teaching of the Persian language to all inter-ested students, both graduate and undergraduate, whether from a Persian speaking background, typically familiar with the language to an extent or with no previous exposure to the language. The latter group will be placed in elementary Persian courses (PERS 101 and PERS 102), proceed to intermediate level (PERRS 201 and PERS 202) in their second year, and eventually move up to the advanced level courses (PERS 301 and 302) in their third year. The former group – i.e., those with some previous exposure to the Persian language – will be put through a series of formal and/or informal tests and placed in the level most appropriate for them.
Of the remaining six courses, four will be offered every year in the English language with content directed at Persian studies, as follows: PERS 251 – Modern Iran PERS 353 – Iranian Life in Literature and Film PERS 371 – Introduction to Persian Literature in Translation PERS 441 – Islam in Iran.One course, PERS 452 – Survey of Persian Literary Texts, will be a regular offering in Persian literature conducted in Persian. Only
those with total native fluency and the ability to read and write in Persian are admitted to this course where the language of instruction will be Persian; however, course content varies from year to year. Other Persian literature courses conducted in Persian will be offered on an ad hoc basis as independent study or special topics (PERS 399, PERS 499, SLLC 889-2901, etc.), as warranted. The last remaining course, Islam and Democracy in the Modern Age, is offered regularly under SLLC 499a – Special Topics in World Cultures.
of its functionaries, has come to believe that the current political system in Iran has failed to re-spond to the aspirations expressed through the revolution of 1978-83, that the way forward lies through the total separation of the mosque from the state, and that the change must proceed through non-violent means. In recent years, Ganji has been imprisoned twice; he went on a long and grueling hunger strike the second time. This action attracted world-wide at-tention and thousands of world political figures and intellectuals wrote to Iranian authorities demanding his release. He is now touring the US and says that he would like to return to Iran.
The event was moderated by CPS Direc-tor and Professor Arjang Assad, Senior Associate Dean at the School of Business. Mr. Ganji spoke in Persian while interpre-tive services made the content of his talk available to all. Below, the news of the event, as printed in the March 13th issue the Diamondback, the University of Maryland’s Student-run daily paper.
PERSIPHONY No.2: Spring 2007Newsletter of The Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
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Thanks to a generous grant from the Persian Cultural Foundation (PCF) of New Jersey, the CPS enjoyed the presence of three prominent Iranian writers in our area on Wednesday April 25, 2007. Moniro Ra-vanipor, Shahriar Mandanipour and Babak Takhti. Along with UMD’s Writer-in-Resi-dence Ezzat Goushegir, they participated in two events and discussed the state of creative writing and literary publishing in today’s Iran. The first event, hosted by the Library of Congress’s Iranian World Divi-sion, took place in the main auditorium of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building from 1-2:30 PM; the second was held 7-9:30 PM in Tyser auditorium at the UMD’s Rob-ert H. Smith School of Business. The two events had much in common, as they were both conducted in freewheeling In-Conver-sation style exchanges that shed light on the creative process as envisioned and practiced by each and the problem of censorship that all creative minds face in Iran at the present time.
Internationally acclaimed novelist Moniro Ravanipor, author of numerous novels and several short story collections, centered on the cultures of the Persian Gulf littoral coast, led the discussion by focusing on her own writing in relation to the restrictions that the ideological state in Iran imposes on creativity. In today’s Iran, she reminded the audience, when you ask how someone is doing, they answer back with a question
of their own: “and how are you doing?” thus avoiding all probes into their personal life. Babak Takhti, who is a publisher as well as a writer of short stories and who has daily dealing with state authorities, said that his work is marked by a deep desire for dialog simply because the state’s censorship apparatus seems intent on stifling the emer-gence of free give-and-takes among Iranian citizens.
For his part, Shahriar Mandanipour, who has authored nine works of fiction and who, in 1998, received the Golden Tablet award for best fiction of the past 20 years in Iran and in 2004 won the Mehregan prize for the best children’s story, stressed that, in spite of severe censorship literary creativ-ity goes on; in fact, he opined, censorship seems to make Iranian writers more crafty and more adept at delving into new depth in their fictional worlds. Mandanipour distin-guished between “bureaucratic censorship” and what he terms “censorship in the field”. Whereas the first is routine, the second aims at eradicating the human spirit of inquiry and exploration. Ezzat Goushegir, the only panelist who lives outside the country and who has written plays, poems and stories both in English and Persian, highlighted other challenges to writing. “When I left Iran”, she said, “I felt I had so much to say.” Life in exile, however, affects the creative process negatively in that writers lose their readers and therefore their reason for writ-
ing. This situation, combined with everyday exigencies of life, wreaks havoc on the peace of mind needed for creativity.
In the question and answer period that followed, issues of web publishing, Iranian government’s attempts at blocking and filtering web sites set up by expatriate Ira-nians, and the rather disheartening issue of Iranian readership of contemporary litera-ture, as reflected in statistics on low publica-tion and circulation, were discussed rather extensively. The panel discussion ended at 9:30, but informal interactions between speakers and their audience continued for another half hour.
The Center for Persian Studies wishes to thank the participating authors and the au-dience for these rare occasions where read-ers and writers meet up close and exchanges views in an unencumbered way. We also would like to express our gratitude to the UMD’s Robert H. Smith School of Busi-ness, and in particular to the School’s Senior Associate Dean Dr. Arjang Assad for his unflagging support of this and other CPS events. Dr. Assad gave of his time most generously by agreeing also to make avail-able his superb interpretive services at the event. Last, we would like to thank the Per-sian Cultural Foundation and its President Dr. Akbar Ghahay for sponsoring this and many other events that CPS organizes for the benefit of our students and community members.
The Creative Impulse and Its Enemies:Two Panel Discussions on Iran’s Current Literary Scene
1�Persian Visions CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY FROM IRAN
The first major exhibition of contempo-rary Iranian photography in the U.S. came to the UMD in April 2007. Consisting of over sixty works of artistic photography and eye-popping video installations by twenty of Iran’s most celebrated visual art-ists, the exhibition proved a huge hit for our students and lovers of art from all over the region.
Characterized by a predominance of personal perspectives and a refreshing view of contemporary Iran through private, in-dividual sensibilities, even when addressing public concerns, each picture seemed worth many thousands of words. Organized and presented by the UMD’s Art Gallery in conjunction with the Center for Persian Studies, the exhibition was on view from April 2 through April 29, 2007.
The following words from the press re-lease issued in advance of the event seemed to capture its spirit through the following excerpt: “Iran has distinguished itself with the spectacular quality and international presence of its film and visual art. Given the backdrop of attention increasingly fo-cused on the art and culture of Iran, and now on the political crisis in that part of the world, an exhibition of this kind is most timely. The perspective of these artists contradicts the way many foreign photog-raphers use the medium - which is to repre-sent Iran and its people as purely exotic.”
In expressing their individual visions of the world, the artists offered a look at their country’s private and public realms. They did so, now through self-portraits and family photographs exploring female identity, now drawing on the rich heritage of Persian literature for their subject matter, now focusing on family histories through portraits that captured the subtleties and
nuances of family life in modern-day Iran. In some works the veil seemed to receive acknowledgment as a sign of culture, while in others veiled figures seemed to serve as a demand that the viewer look harder and think harder about what can be revealed through the veil. The ultimate message, that artists cannot entirely surmount the physi-cal and cultural distance between Iran and the United States, seemed to be balanced off against a manifest desire to build artistic bridges that, while allowing for differences, may lead to a greater awareness of other ways of being and seeing.
Persian Visions was developed by Hamid Severi for the Tehran Museum of Contem-porary Art, Iran, and Gary Hallman of the Regis Center for Art, University of Min-nesota and toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C. This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the ILEX
Foundation; the University of Minnesota McKnight Arts and Humanities Endow-ment; and the Department of Art, the Regis Center for Art, University of Minnesota. A fully-illustrated catalogue with an essay by Robert Silberman, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Art History, published by International Arts & Artists accompanied the exhibition.
To the over 2,000 individuals who visited the Persian Visions art exhibition over the 27 days it was held at the UMD, Persian Visions presented nothing less than an alternative view of Iran as a society with great artistic capabilities and marked Iranian artists as a social group that is politically aware and ar-tistically vibrant, harbingers of great changes in their culture and country.
The Center for Persian Studies1��0 Jimenez HallUniversity of MarylandCollege Park, MD, �0���USA
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLANDCollege of Arts and HumanitiesSchool of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
By Rouzbeh Shams, PC Mentor
The establishment of the Center for The Persian Studies (CPS) in the fall of 2004 increased the opportunities for Persian-speaking students at Univer-sity of Maryland considerably. These opportunities include an increasing number of courses related to Persian language and literature and Iran’s culture and history as well as the many semi-nars, conferences, lecture series and oth-er events which students attend to meet and hear many world renowned scholars of Iran and the Persian world. In addi-tion, exactly a year after the opening of CPS, with the help of Dr. Phoenix Liu, the director of the Language House Im-mersion Program, a new Persian Cluster was added to the other eight language clusters in the University of Maryland’s Language House in St. Mary’s Hall.The Language House Immersion pro-
gram is a living and learning program in which students live with other students studying the same language. This envi-ronment extends language learning out of the classroom setting, and provides the opportunity for constant conversa-tions in the language as well as deeper insights into the culture. Each language is assigned a mentor who is responsible for organizing weekly meetings and ac-tivities to further involve students into the language and culture.As the mentor of the Persian Cluster, I have striven to make our apartment not only a cultural environment for the students in the cluster, but also for other Iranians on campus. The Persian Cluster is also closely involved with the activities of the Center for the Persian Studies. This semester we have nine students, including myself.
Top to buttom, left to right:Rouzbeh Shams, Behrad Behbahani, Amir
Farhangi, Ali Shabestari, Saam BozorgmehrMona Ghias, Meena Jafari, Neda Khalili,
