The Persian Traditional Music Golha Project: Jane Lewisohn

Jane Lewisohn

Jane Lewisohn lived in Iran during the 1970s for six years and is a graduate of Pahalavi University, Shiraz, Iran. She has been involved in the research and promotion of various aspects of Persian Studies for the last three decades. Since 2005 she has been  directing the Golha Project under the auspices of the British Library, London, and the Music Department of SOAS, University of London. She has archived and digitalised the whole archive of the Golha radio programmes broadcast on Iranian Radio from 1956 through 1979. She is now working in collaboration with the IHF to make this Golha Archive and all the related research concerning the Golha Archive available over the internet at  http://www.golha.co.uk. (From SOAS University of London)

The Golha (‘Flowers of Persian Song and Music’) radio programmes were broadcast on Iranian National Radio for 23 years from 1956 through 1979. They comprised approximately 850 hours of programmes made up of literary commentary with the declamation of poetry, which is also sung with musical accompaniment, interspersed with solo musical pieces. The programmes themselves were the brainchild of Davoud Pirnia, a one-time Assistant Prime Minister, who in addition to being a well-known politician and judge, was an enthusiastic patriot and scholar who harboured a deep love for Persian culture and its rich literary and musical traditions. When he retired from political life in 1956, for the next eleven years he devoted himself tirelessly to producing of the Golha programmes. (By Jane Lewisohn)

Space of Resistance: The Return of the Avant-garde to the Streets of Iran

Talinn Grigor

Dr. Talinn Grigor is an Associate Professor of modern and contemporary architecture in the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University. Her research concentrates on the cross-pollination of architecture and (post)colonial politics, focused on Iran and India. Her first book, Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (Prestel, 2009) examines the link between official architecture and heritage discourses in 20th-century Iran. Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture and Arts: Street, Studio, and Exile (Reaktion, forthcoming) explores Iranian visual culture through the premise of the art historical debate of populist versus avant-garde art that extends into the identity politics of the exile. A co-edited book with Sussan Babaie, entitled Persian Kingship and Architecture: Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis (I.B. Tauris, forthcoming), investigates the architectural legitimization of royal power through Iran’s long history. Her articles have appeared in the Art Bulletin, Getty Research Journal, Third Text, Journal of Iranian Studies, Thresholds, and DOCOMOMO among others. Past grants and fellowships include the Getty Research Institute, Cornell University, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Soudavar Memorial Foundation, the Soros Foundation, the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute and the Aga Khan at MIT. Her present project deals with the turn-of-the-century European art-historiography and its links to eclectic-revivalistic architecture in Qajar Iran and the British Raj. (From Brandeis University).

Understanding Persian Culture through Film

The Iranian Crystal Phoenix Award

Tehran-based film critic, festival organizer and director of Iranian Independents, Mohammad Atebbai joins a panel of scholars including Dr. Kaveh Ehsani, editor and Assistant Professor of International Studies, DePaul University, Chicago; Dr. Wimal Dissanayake, Professor of Intercultural Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, East West Center; Dr. Norma Claire Moruzzi, Associate Professor of Political Science (Gender and Women's Studies) and Director, International Studies Program, University of Illinois, Chicago; and Alissa Simon, film reviewer for VARIETY and senior film programmer for the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Topics of discussion include Iranian Film History, Contemporary Iranian Urban Society, Culturally Specific and Universal Experiences, and Women in Film and Society.

Generously co-sponsored by the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, AsiaPacificFilms, and NETPAC/USA

Persian HipHop 021 to LDN: Reveal Poison at TEDxBathUniversity

Reveal Poison

Reveal Poison is an Iranian born, London raised hip-hop artist, writer and ethnomusicologist. Growing up while travelling back and forth between such contrasting urban environments as Tehran and London has provided him with a sense of dual identity for most of his life. He is currently studying Mmus Ethnomusicology at SOAS.

www.myspace.com/revealpoison

In this TED Talk, Reveal Poison presents a short history of Iranian hip hop and Persian rap. In this account,  he talks about how underground Iranian rappers borrowed African-American rap but Iranified the tunes through employing Iranian musical instruments, tapping to old traditions of Persian poetry to write their  songs, and adding a Persian mystic colour to their music. Reveal Poison, in this presentation, speaks about the process of shaping Persian rap from the point of view of an insider, a short history of the foundation of Persian rap by a Persian-British rapper.

Mohamad Tavakoli Targhi; Islam and the Contest of Faculties in Iran (2011)

Mohamad Tavakoli Targhi

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi is Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto and the chair of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto-Mississauga. Since 2002 he has served as the Editor of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a Duke University Press journal, and has served on the editorial board of Iranian Studies, the Journal of the International Society for Iranian Studies.

His areas of specialization encompass Middle Eastern History, Modernity, Nationalism, Gender Studies, Orientalism, and Occidentalism. He is the author of two books, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Nationalist Historiography (Palgrave, 2001) and Tajaddud-i Bumi [Vernacular Modernity] (in Persian, Nashr-i Tarikh, 2003). He has authored numerous articles: “The Homeless Texts of Persianate Modernity,” in Iran--Between Tradition and Modernity (Lexington Books, 2004); “Orientalist Studies and Its Amnesia,” in Antinomies of Modernity (Duke, 2002), “Eroticizing Europe,” in Society and Culture in Qajar Iran: (Mazda, 2002); “Women of the West Imagined,” in Identity Politics and Women (Westview Press, 1994); “From Patriotism to Matriotism: A Tropological Study of Iranian Nationalism, 1870-1909," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2002), “Inventing Modernity, Borrowing Modernity,” Iran Nameh (2003).

Born and raised in the “navel of Tehran,” Iran, Professor Tavakoli is the recipient of two Outstanding Teacher awards from Illinois State University (1996 and 2001); a Research Initiative Award (1992); and visiting fellowships at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (1998), the Center for Historical Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, 1992-93); and Harvard University (1991-92).

He has initiated numerous conferences and workshops on topical issues pertaining to the Middle East, and has encouraged the active involvement of student associations in the organization of scholarly events and community outreach programs. He holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in History from the University of Iowa, and a PhD in History from the University of Chicago.  (From Tavakoli's official website)

Elaine Sciolino Talks about "Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Faces of Iran"

Elaine Sciolino

No American reporter has more experience covering Iran or more access to the private corners of Iranian society than Elaine Sciolino. As a correspondent for Newsweek and The New York Times, she has reported on the key events of the past two decades. She was aboard the airplane that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Tehran in 1979; she was there for the Iranian revolution, the hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, the rise of President Mohammad Khatami, and the riots of the summer of 1999.


Persian Mirrors takes us into the public and private spaces of Iran—the bazaars, beauty salons, aerobics studios, courtrooms, universities, mosques, and the presidential palace—to capture the vitality of a society so often misunderstood by Americans. She demystifies a country of endless complexity, where, on the streets, women swathe themselves in black and behind high walls, they adorn themselves with makeup and jewelry; where the laws of Islam are the law of the land, and yet the government advertises as tourist attractions the ruins of the pre-Islamic imperial capital at Persepolis and the synagogue where Queen Esther is said to be buried; and where even the most austere clerics recite sensual romantic poetry, insisting that it refers to divine, and not earthly, love. Iran is also a place with a dark side, where unpredictable repression is carried out, officially and unofficially, by forces intent on maintaining power and influence.


Sciolino deftly uses her travels throughout Iran and her encounters with its people to portray the country as an exciting, daring laboratory where experiments with two highly volatile chemicals – Islam and democracy – are being conducted. The election of the reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami as President in 1997 exposed these contradictions by opening the door not only to greater popular participation in Iran’s Islamic government, but also to fierce political infighting, conducted as much with subtlety and indirection as with repression and fear.


Like the mirror mosaics found in Iran’s royal palaces and religious shrines, there is more to the whole of the country than the fragments revealed to outsiders. Persian Mirrors captures this elusive Iran. Sciolino paints in astonishing detail and rich color the surprising inner life of this country, where a great battle is raging not for control over territory but for the soul of the nation. (From Elaine Sciolino's website)

Abdolkarim Soroush: "Shi'ism in Need of Reform"



Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush



Abdolkarim Soroush (عبدالكريم سروش), born Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh (1945-; Persian: حسين حاج فرج دباغ), is an Iranian thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar and a former professor at the University of Tehran. He is arguably the most influential figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran. Professor Soroush is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. He was also affiliated with other prestigious institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, the Leiden based International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. Soroush idea's, founded on Relativism prompted both supporters and critics to compare his role in reforming Islam to that of Martin Luther in reforming Christianity. (From Wikipedia).

Dariush Shayegan Talks about the Golden Age of Iranian Culture and How to Revive it (Global Dialogue Prize 2009's Speech)

Dariush Shayegan

Dariush Shayegan (born in 1935 in Tehran) (Persian: داریوش شایگان) is one of Iran's prominent thinkers, cultural theorists and comparative philosophers.

Shayegan studied at Sorbonne University in Paris. He was a Professor of Sanskrit and Indian religions at Tehran University.

He wrote a novel "Land of Mirage" in French which won the ADELF award presented by the Association of French Authors on December 26, 2004. According to the Persian daily Aftab, Shayegan is well known in France for his books in the field of philosophy and mysticism.

Shayegan, who studied with Henry Corbin in Paris, also did many pioneering works on Persian mysticism and mystic poetry. He was a founding director of the Iranian Center for the Studies of Civilizations. In 1977, Shayegan initiated an international symposium on the "dialogue between civilizations," a concept that has been selectively appropriated by the former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. In 2009 Shayegan was awarded the inaugural Global Dialogue Prize, an international award for "outstanding achievements in the advancement and application of intercultural value research", in recognition of his dialogical conception of cultural subjectivity.

Shirin Neshat: Art in exile

Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat explores the paradox of being an artist in exile: a voice for her people, but unable to go home. In her work, she explores Iran pre- and post-Islamic Revolution, tracing political and societal change through powerful images of women.

Shirin Neshat is among the best-known Persian artists in the Western world. She has lived in the United States, in self-imposed exile from her native Iran, for most of her adult life. This experience, of being caught between two cultures, dominates Neshat’s creative work: each of her pieces offers a glimpse into the complex social, religious and political realities that shape her identity—and the identities of Muslim women worldwide.

Neshat’s provocative photographs, videos and multimedia installations have resonated with the curators of many major international art exhibitions, including the XLVIII Venice Biennale, where she won the top prize in 1999. Her first feature film, Women Without Men, tells the stories of four women struggling to escape oppression in Tehran. It won her the Silver Lion for best director at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. (From TED)

"Walk into a Shirin Neshat film installation and the images seize you: big, memorable, physically beautiful, exploring the role of women in Islamic society in terms of cinematic poetry, so that even the stifling chador becomes powerfully expressive." The New York Times, July 15, 2002

Rick Steves' Talk about Iran

Richard "Rick" Steves (born May 10, 1955, Edmonds, Washington) is an American author, historian, and television personality focusing on European travel. He is the host of the public television series Rick Steves' Europe, has a public radio travel show, Travel with Rick Steves, and has authored various location-specific travel guides. (From Wikipedia)