The University of Maryland’s School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (SLLC) Summer Language Institute offers language and culture programs for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced students of Persian from June 1st to July 2nd, 2015 (Session One) and from July 6th to August 5th, 2015 (Session Two).

The Persian Language Summer Institute implements an innovative language curriculum, creating a rich learning environment that simulates immersion while on campus. Students effectively live in a Persian-speaking environment during their time at Maryland, with approximately five hours a day of structured language-learning experiences. Students also gain language exposure through language partner hours with an Advanced Persian native speaker. If interested, please contact [email protected] as soon as possible to secure your space.

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On the heels of the first Persian Screen Film Festival held at the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Doris Duke Theatre from September 6-12, the Persian Language, Linguistics and Culture Program of the University of Hawaii at Manoa is organizing its own series of movie screenings dedicated to Iran. The six titles selected for the fall semester portray evocative contemporary themes and include award-winning films by Abbas Kiarostami and Tahmineh Milani.

September 25: “Café Setareh,” 2006, directed by Saman Moghadam

October 10: “Party,” 2000, directed by Saman Moghadam

October 24: “Ten,” 2004, directed by Abbas Kiarostami

November 7: “Wind Will Carry Us,” 1999, directed by Abbas Kiarostami

November 21: “Hidden Half,” 2001, directed by Tahmineh Milani

December 5: “Close-up,” 2001, directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Please join the Persian Language, Linguistics and Culture Program for this cultural exploration of Iranian cinema. Additional events and activities this semester celebrating Persian tradition and culture will be announced shortly.

After the successful conclusion of the 6-month long lecture series on “A Thousand Years of the Persian Book,” Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland announced new events for the fall semester. Included are:

Poetry Night dedicated to Simin Behbahani (September 29) and Qeisar Aminpour (October 27)

Brown Bag Series with “Popular Cinema in Iran” by Dr. Pedram Partovi (American University) (October 1), “Authorship in Seventeenth-Century Persian Painting: Man, Mode and Myth” by Dr. Amy Landau (Walters Art Museum) (October 22), “Language and Thought in Sadi’s Poetry” by Dr. Navid Bazargan (Tehran Azad University) (November 12), and “Performing Qanun/Classical Persian Music” by Shahla Nikfal (December 3)

Movie Series with screening of “Border Café” directed by Kambuzia Partovi (October 7), “The Wind Carpet” by Kamal Tabrizi (November 4), and “Tehran Has No More Pomegranates” by Massoud Bakhshi (December 2).

The Persian Studies Program at San José State University is holding several exciting events this fall designed to celebrate Persian art, literature and culture. On October 14, Omid Scheybani will deliver a talk on “Iran: A Smartphone Photographer’s Perspective,” followed by “Persian Miniature Painting and the Shahnameh” by SJSU’s own Dr. Johanna Movassat on October 16. On November 13, the University will welcome Dr. Ladan Akbarnia, curator of Islamic art at the British Museum and executive director of Iran Heritage Foundation, for a lecture on “East-West Cultural Transmissions in Post Mongol Iran.” Finally, Sara Mashayekh will present a one-woman show entitled “Off the Curtain: The Tragedy of Rostam and Sohrab” on November 15. Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to support these activities and the Persian Studies Program of SJSU.

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Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to congratulate Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz, Roshan Institute Chair in Persian Studies and Director of Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, on her forthcoming book entitled Lyrics of Life: Sa’di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self.

This imaginative and accessible study of the lyrical, humorous, social and educational aspects of classical Persian poetry focuses on the works of the master medieval poet Sa’di of Shiraz (d. 1291), one of the funniest, most influential and lyrical figures in classical Persian poetry. Sa’di, a prominent ethicist and a devout teacher of virtues, stands out for his worldliness, his practical teachings, and his love for living a wholesome life, as well as for his signature elegance and artistry that has compelled critics to call his lyrics perfectly polished diamonds.

Dr. Keshavarz is a published poet and author of six books including Reading Mystical Lyric: the Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi, Recite in the Name of the Red Rose: Poetic Sacred Making in Twentieth Century Iran and Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran. Lyrics of Life will be published by the Edinburgh University Press as part of the Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture E on January 1, 2015.

UC Irvine’s School of Humanities will offer a minor in Persian studies thanks to financial support from Farhang Foundation, a nonreligious, nonpolitical and not-for-profit entity established in 2008 to celebrate and promote Iranian art and culture. Once finalized, the program will consist of courses already offered at UCI as well as new ones to be developed. The funding will also enable the hiring of a lecturer to teach these courses. The Persian studies minor will be available to undergraduate students in the 2015-16 academic year.

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On November 13, the University of Washington’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization and Persian and Iranian Studies Program will welcome Professor Touraj Daryaee (UC Irvine) for his lecture “Empire as a Garden: A Late Antique Vision of Iran”. This presentation looks at the physical and ideological boundaries that the Sasanian Empire created for the idea of Iranshahr (Realm of the Iranians). In this late antique construct, inside the empire and protected by walls and rivers, was imagined a garden in which order and beauty flourished. However, the area outside of the walls and the rivers was seen as place of wilderness and disorder. This binary division was at the center of Sasanian ideology, which projected peace and power inside, but danger for its people outside its boundaries.

The Persian and Iranian Studies Program will also hold several Persian Studies Workshops this year, featuring Professor Kenneth Harl (Tulane University), Professors Naghmeh Samini and Farhad Atai (University of Tehran), and UW’s 2013-2014 Roshan Institute Fellow, Jipar Duishembieva. They will discuss subjects ranging from Iranian archaeology to theater and poetry.

UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th- Century Studies announced that its Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship program will focus on “The Frontiers of Persian Learning: Testing the Limits of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, 1600–1900” in 2015-2016. The theme-based resident fellowship program, established with the support of the Ahmanson Foundation and the J. Paul Getty Trust, is designed to encourage the participation of junior scholars in the Center’s yearlong core programs.

The 2015-2016 program will include conferences on “The Geographical Frontiers of Persian Learning” (October 16, 2015), “The Social Frontiers of Persian Learning” (February 5, 2016), and “The Epistemological Frontiers of Persian Learning” (April 8–9, 2016).

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to announce that several fellowships are available to graduate students pursuing Persian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

One Roshan Institute Fellowship in Persian Linguistics, Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics will support a qualified student admitted to a doctoral program in Linguistics or in Second Language Studies at the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature in 2015-2016. This annual fellowship is renewable for up to three years. Several Roshan Institute Fellowships for Persian Language and Culture will be awarded in spring 2015 to graduate students taking Persian language and culture courses offered by the Persian Language, Linguistics, and Culture Program.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute would like to commend Dr. Matthew Stolper (John A. Wilson Professor Emeritus of Oriental Studies, The University of Chicago), Dr. Mark Garrison (Alice Pratt Brown Professor of Art and Art History, Trinity University), and students Christina Chandler and Erin Daly, for their excellent work on the Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA) Project during summer 2014. This initiative has been supported by Roshan Institute since 2013.

Under the supervision of Professor Stolper, Director, PFA Project, and Professor Garrison, PFA Project Editor, Ms. Chandler and Ms. Daly recorded and documented seal impressions on tablets discovered at Persepolis. Their work is crucial to the study of Elamite and Aramaic texts inscribed on these tablets, and contribute to advancing scholarship in Persian Achaemenid studies. In addition, both students earned valuable first-hand experience with important artifacts and plan to pursue their work in the PFA Project and in Persian Studies. Ms. Chandler is currently a first year Ph.D. candidate in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College and Ms. Daly began the Ph.D. program in Classics at The University of Chicago.

Learn more about the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project

Daniel Beckman is the recipient of Roshan Institute Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies at UCLA for 2014-2015. He recently completed his fifth year of graduate studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. His dissertation research focuses on examining the ways that the Achaemenid Persian empire used written treaties to control the Greek states on the Aegean frontier, and covers a wide range of Iranian, Mesopotamian, and Greek source materials. He will be presenting some of his finding under the title “Achaemenid Satraps and the Aegean Frontier” at the Tenth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference in August 2014.