Published in association with Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali, Founder and Chair, Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute
Series Editor: Professor Stephanie Cronin

Covering the history of Iran and the Persian world from the medieval period to the present, this series aims to become the pre-eminent place for publication in this field. As well as its core concern with Iran, it will extend its concerns to encompass a much broader and more loosely defined cultural and linguistic world, including Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Xinjiang, and northern India. Books in the series will present a range of conceptual and methodological approaches, looking not only at states, dynasties, and elites but at subalterns, minorities, and everyday life.

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James F. Harris, 81, eminent scholar of 19th-century German history and longtime dean of the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) at the University of Maryland, died Feb. 22, 2022, of heart disease at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. His deanship was marked by numerous academic and philanthropic achievements, including the development of an integrative approach to Middle East studies delivered in part through the creation of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies and the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, the first centers of their kind in the U.S. under his leadership, the college also collaborated with the UMD Libraries and Office of Information Technology to establish the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, which has become a leading intellectual hub and international center for digital humanities.

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The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fund within the Louvre Endowment Fund has received an exceptional donation of $2.3 million from American Friends of the Louvre thanks to the generosity of Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute.

In 2011, Dr Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali and her son Pierre Omidyar became the first philanthropists to support the Louvre Endowment Fund through Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. They created a specific fund to advance research in art history and promote cultural outreach linked to the Persian world. Thanks to this partnership, Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute has also created the first Louvre fellowship programme.

This new donation will allow for the creation of a second Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali fellowship for the Louvre: the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities and the Department of Islamic Art will therefore each benefit from a new fellow. The donation also brings greater funding for cultural outreach and research relating to the Persian world within the Musée du Louvre.

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Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute extends its best wishes to eveyrone for the celebration of Noruz 1400.

Noruz – literally “New Day” – is the Persian New Year, a most cherished celebration that goes back 3,000 years and symbolizes life renewal in health and harmony with nature. Noruz starts at the exact instant of the Vernal Equinox, which occurs each year around the 21st of March, the first day of spring. This most important Iranian holiday is a time for family and friends to gather together and is marked with a myriad of activities affecting everything from preparations and celebrations to food, clothing, gift giving, charity, and many other social and family activities.

Haftsin (Haft Seen) is the spread, around which the Family gathers to celebrate Noruz. Iranians take pride in putting together an attractive and elaborate spread to represent both spiritual and worldly symbols promising a happy start of the New Year. The Persian word Haft means seven and Sin refers to the sound /S/ in the language. Usually a nice embroidered fabric is used as the foundation of the spread. On the spread seven specific items starting with the sound /S/ are displayed. The set is prepared a day or two before Noruz and given a place of honor in the house to remain 13 days following Noruz. Additional items are also placed on the Haftsin that will signify renewal, life, happiness, spiritual purity, prosperity, fertility, growth, good health and all things one desires for the New Year.

This celebration is one of hope, promise and good fortune to enjoy and share with friends and family.

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Fellowship in Ancient Iranian Studies will support Ph.D. students who are studying the ancient Iranian/Persian world (550 BCE to 650 CE) and are advised or co-advised by the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Presidential Chair in Art History & Archeology of Ancient Iran, currently Professor Matthew Canepa. The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Fellowship in the Study of the Persian/Iranian World will be open to students studying the Iranian world in any time period or discipline, in any UCI Ph.D. program that participates in the concentration.

The two fellowships established by this grant are among the only permanent, endowed Ph.D. fellowships in the world dedicated specifically to ancient Iranian studies. Administered by the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Presidential Chair and the Dean of Humanities, the fellowships will be part of a competitive five-year funding package guaranteed to Ph.D. students upon admission.

“The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Fellowships will be transformative both for UCI – which will attract top doctoral students as a result – and for the field of Iranian studies more generally,” said Professor Canepa, who directs the graduate specialization. “By graduating with a disciplinary Ph.D. as well as credentials in Iranian studies, doctoral students will be ideally equipped to compete for the widest possible range of positions at the widest possible range of institutions and programs.”

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute has supported several Persian-focused initiatives at UCI, and this new grant marks our second endowment. The $2 million Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Presidential Chair in Art History & Archaeology of Ancient Iran was created in 2017.

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As a member of the faculty of George Washington University for 35 years, he was the founder of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Director of the Institute for Urban Development Research, Chairman of the Department of Geography and Regional Science, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, and one of the founders of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. Professor McGrath also served as a member of the adjunct faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies and of Goucher College.

Professor McGrath was equally well known as a civic activist. Throughout his career, he worked closely with neighborhoods, as well as with various agencies of the District of Columbia, state and federal governments. Professor McGrath also served for a decade as chairman of the prestigious Committee of 100 on the Federal City, a group started a century ago to promote sound planning for the nation’s capital.

Professor McGrath was an author or coauthor of dozens of articles in wide variety of professional journals. Over his long career, he received numerous awards and other distinctions from GWU, numerous civic and governmental groups and even foreign governments.

Dorn will be sorely missed by the Institute as well as by countless family, friends and admirers. The Institute has no information at this time concerning services or other memorials.

With investments allocated over a multi-year period, the endowment–RCHI’s largest to date–will significantly expand the University’s prestigious Iranian Studies program by:

• Providing substantial support for a world-leading scholar who will serve as the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute’s Director;
• Launching a regular Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Lecture Series and international conference to facilitate exchanges and discussions for the academic community;
• Enhancing the graduate experience by awarding annually up to two Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Dissertation Completion Fellowships to top doctoral students in Iranian-related studies; and at least two Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Scholarships to pursue Persian language training abroad, participate in conferences or conduct research in the field;
• Establishing a two-year Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Postdoctoral Fellowship to enable recently graduated Ph.D.s to deepen their expertise in Iranian studies and further their own research at the University;
• Launching the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Scholar Award program for tenure-track U of T faculty members in Iranian studies to assist them in compiling successful tenure files; and
• Engaging the public and bring focus to the richness of the Iranian culture by hosting annual cultural programs celebrating Persian holidays.

The new endowed position will foster the creation of new courses in Persian and Persianate Studies, support interdepartmental projects and develop regional, national and international appreciation of Persian and Iranian cultural legacies.

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies will be located at 90 Queen’s Park, a state-of-the-art research and teaching facility adjacent to the Royal Ontario Museum that is currently under construction at the University. At this stunning new building, U of T scholars—more than 18 leaders in the field of Iranian Studies—will work alongside those from the School of Cities, the Faculty of Music, the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Departments of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. They will also have opportunities to connect with U of T’s outstanding network of researchers, across three campuses, and collaborate with Toronto’s lively and growing Iranian community in the heart of one of the world’s most diverse cities.

Please join our Board in celebrating together the announcement of this significant milestone for both U of T and RCHI.

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This marks the first endowed professorship in NECL and its inaugural holder will be Dr. Aria Fani, who joined UW in 2019 as an Assistant Professor in Persian and Iranian Studies. During his first year, Dr. Fani taught topical courses in Persian literature and popular courses on Near Eastern travelogues and cinematic cultures. Dr. Fani has a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and his research focuses on the Persian language and cultural heritage as shared medium for modern literary cultures of Iran and Afghanistan. He has published a textbook for the teaching of Persian as a heritage language and is currently working on a poetry collection by Bizhan Jalali titled Shades of Silence.

The new endowed position will foster the creation of new courses in Persian and Iranian Studies, support interdepartmental projects and develop regional, national and international appreciation of Persian and Iranian cultural legacies.

This is Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute’s second endowment to the University of Arizona. In 2003, an endowment for Roshan Institute Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies was established in NELC for outstanding graduate students in the field of Persian and Iranian studies.

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This virtual symposium brings together a range of scholars from different disciplines focusing on modern Iran to analyze the wide variety of ways in which love and desire have been represented, imagined, and discursively constructed. Participants will address discourses of love and desire and revisit those discourses considering the implications that they have for larger theoretical debates.

The series of panels runs from September 5 to October 3, 2020:

• Panel I: Love and Desire Across borders in Modern Iran and Diaspora – Saturday September 5th @ 5pm-6:30pm
• Panel II: Embodied Bodies, Non-normativity, and Power Dynamics in Modern Iranian Literature and Film – Saturday September 12th @ 12pm-1:30pm
• Horner-Jarrahi Keynote Speaker: Professor Janet Afary, Mellichamp Chair in Global Religion and Modernity, University of California, Santa Barbara – Saturday September 19th @ 12pm-1:30pm
• Panel III: Religio-Political Dimensions of Desire in Modern Iran – Saturday September 26th @ 12pm-1:30pm
• Roundtable: Love, Laws, and Changes – Saturday October 3rd @ 12pm-1:30pm

Registrants will be provided with a Zoom webinar link in advance of each panel.

Read more for additional information and registration

Seven American singers from the Washington, DC-based opera company IN Series and 19 Iranian musicians of the Solidarity Chamber Orchestra of Tehran collaborated over video and other digital media to perform a rendition of German-British composer Handel’s “Serse,” an operatic series based on the story of Xerxes I of Persia. The socially distanced performance was overlaid with recitations of poetry from Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet and philosopher.

View a clip of the performance

Dr. Moosavi has served as a faculty member and designed curricula for the University of Toronto, York University (Canada), Portland State University (U.S.A) and Parand Azad University (Iran). She is the author of several scholarly articles, book chapters, and interviews published in The Drama Review (TDR), New Theatre Quarterly, Asian Theatre Journal, Ecumenica) and online journals (Critical Stages, Arab Stages, and TheTheatreTimes). She is the Founder and Principal Investigator of the First Digital Guide to Theater of the Middle East.

Learn more about Roshan Institute for Persian Studies