Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is honored to announce the launch of The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Lecture Series at UMD Roshan Institute for Persian Studies. The Series is named in honor of Dr. Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali, the Founder, Chair and President of Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute.

Roshan Institute for Persian Studies will celebrate the launch of the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Lecture Series at UMD with an event featuring the documentary film, “Classical Persian Music: Hossein Omoumi from Isfahan to Irvine,” followed by “Voices for Spring,” a concert by Maestro Omoumi and musicians Jessika Kenney, Amir Koushkani and Hamin Honari. Maestro Omoumi is an acclaimed musician, scholar and master of the Persian reed flute called “ney”.

He is the Maseeh Professor in Persian Performing Arts at the University of California, Irvine, and has devoted the past 20 years developing an innovative method for teaching Radif—the large, complex repertoire of classical Persian music. In 2013, he was awarded a Roshan Institute Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies for the production of the documentary film that focuses on the life of Professor Omoumi as a performer and teacher from Isfahan to Irvine, as well as on his innovations in the field of teaching classical Persian music.
The event is free and open to the public.

Saturday, March 11, 2017 | 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | Tawes Hall, Ulrich Recital Hall, Room 1121 | University of Maryland, College Park

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Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is proud to share that Professor Carl Ernst has recently been awarded the inaugural Global Humanities Translation Prize by the Global Humanities Initiative, in partnership with Northwestern University Press. Professor Ernst received the $5,000 prize for translating and annotating the classical Arabic poems of Persian mystic Mansur al-Hallaj. Executed for heresy in 922 CE, Al-Hallaj is a pivotal figure in the literary and mystical cultures of the Islamic world, and yet this will be the first comprehensive English edition of the poems attributed to Hallaj. Of the 118 poems translated by Professor Ernst, half have never appeared in English before. The manuscript will be published in spring 2018.

William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor, Carl W. Ernst, is a specialist of Islamic studies and the co-Director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His published research, based on the study of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, has been mainly devoted to the study of three areas: general and critical issues of Islamic studies, premodern and contemporary Sufism, and Indo-Muslim culture.

In celebration of Noruz, the Persian New Year, the George Washington University Language Center and the George Washington University Persian Program proudly present the second annual Persian Cultural Week. From March 23 to March 30, 2017, GWU will hold a number of Persian cultural activities, including poetry readings, music, traditional dance and film screening, in addition to lectures on GWU’s campus.

Persian Cultural Week starts on Thursday, March 23, with a Meet & Greet event in the tradition of the Persian Deed va Bazdeed, followed by a lecture by Maricar Donato entitled, “Iran and Its Splendor Lecture: A Report by Tourist Guides Returning from Iran. Noruz Night, a traditional music concert with performances by Kazem Daroudian and a GW Dance Group, will be held on Saturday, March 25. On Tuesday, March 28, GWU will screen “Taxi,” a movie by internationally acclaimed Director Jafar Panahi. The next day, on Wednesday, March 29, Dr. Norma Moruzzi (University of Illinois, Chicago) will present a lecture entitled, “Iranian Women and Society: Finding a Critical Lens into the Politics of Daily Life. GWU Persian Cultural Week will end on Thursday, March 30, with poetry readings in Farsi and English.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to announce that the newly established Roshan Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Arizona’s Graduate School will be admitting a very limited number of graduate students at the M.A. and Ph.D. level for the 2017-2018 academic year.

The Persian and Iranian Studies degrees will focus specifically on either modern or classical Persian literature and culture, or Iranian (or other Persian speaking societies’) history, religion, social organization, and politics. For both, superior language competency in Persian is expected.

In 2016, the University of Arizona received a multimillion-dollar grant from Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute to establish the Roshan Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Persian and Iranian Studies. Professor Kamran Talattof, a professor in Persian language and literature, serves as the initial Roshan Institute Chair in Persian and Iranian Studies and Director of the Roshan Graduate Interdisciplinary Program.

To apply and for more information about the program and availability of financial support, visit www.persian.arizona.edu.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is pleased to announce “Giving Voice to Ancient Texts: Digital Preservation and Access for Endangered Manuscripts from Threatened Communities,” a presentation by Columba Stewart, OSB, Executive Director, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML), on February 15, 2017, at the University of Maryland. The presentation is part of the Roshan Institute Lecture Series at UMD Roshan Institute for Persian Studies.

In this presentation, Columba Stewart, a graduate of Harvard, Yale and Oxford universities, will explain how a Benedictine monastery in Minnesota became involved in such a massive effort to document cultural heritage; describe the challenges of data management and workflow; and present HMML’s online environment for manuscript studies, virtual Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (vHMML), which includes a Reading Room that will ultimately offer almost 100,000 complete digitized manuscripts to scholars around the world. HMML is now partnering with the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at UMD on projects to digitize, describe, and share Persian manuscripts endangered by conflict and environmental challenges.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017 | 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. | Conference Room, Hornbake Library #0301 | University of Maryland College Park

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Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to sponsor the performance of Words and Music in Two Parts, on February 10, 2017, at Memorial Hall, Carolina Performing Arts’ main venue located in the center of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus.

Unique to Carolina Performing Arts, this program blends a rare musical collaboration between two giants of the avant-garde of the past 50 years—Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson—with one of Glass’s most important song cycles, Monsters of Grace. Longtime friends, Glass and Anderson will share musical moments and poetry readings followed by a selection of Glass songs featuring lyrics by 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi, performed by The Philip Glass Ensemble and a cast of longtime Glass vocalists including Tara Hugo, Marie Mascari, Gregory Purnhagen and Peter Stewart.

Words and Music in Two Parts is one of six performances held at Carolina Performing Arts, February 1-10, 2017, in celebration of Glass’s 80th birthday. Glass at 80 features the extraordinary impact Philip Glass has had upon the musical and intellectual life of his time. Glass’s associations, personal and professional, with leading rock, pop and world music artists date back to the 1960s.

The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (NELC) at the University of Washington (UW) invites faculty, students and the Seattle community for a Persian and Iranian Studies Program (PISP) sponsored event with great Iranian composer and multi-instrumentalist (Tar, Setar, Rabab, Uod) Ali Samadpour.

In addition to his solo and ensemble releases, Ali Samadpour has contributed to multiple soundtracks including: Tardid, Dar miane abrha, The Other Side of Burka, Alzheimer, Nose, Iranian Style, and Mandoo.

This talk will be in Persian. The event is free and open to the public.

Thursday, February 2, 2017 | 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. | Communications Building (CMU), Room 120 | University of Washington.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is proud to share that the “Dangerous Classes” in the Middle East and North Africa conference, organized by Roshan Institute Visiting Research Fellow, Dr. Stephanie Cronin, was successfully held on January 26, 2017, at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, with more than 100 in attendance.

The concept of the “dangerous classes” was born in mid-nineteenth century Europe and became famous after the publication in 1872 in New York of a book with the same title by the American social reformer Charles Loring Brace. The conference took as its central theme this notion of the “dangerous classes”. Sessions were led by ten scholars who examined its explanatory power when applied to the Middle East and North Africa in the period from around 1800 to the present.

Dr. Cronin is currently the Roshan Institute Visiting Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College (2015-2018) and a Lecturer in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She has also held an Iran Heritage Foundation fellowship for many years. She is the author of many books on modern Iranian history and is currently working on a social history of modern Iran “from below”. Dr. Cronin received her Ph.D. in History (1992) and her M.A. in Middle East Studies (1981) from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

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Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is pleased to sponsor the performance of avant-garde Iranian composer and vocalist Sussan Deyhim’s acclaimed production The House is Black, on October 28, 2016, at Memorial Hall, Carolina Performing Arts’ main venue located in the center of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus.

Inspired by the works of Forough Farrokhzad, one of Iran’s most influential feminist poets and filmmakers, this stirring multimedia piece sheds light on the importance of Iranian contemporary arts. Co-directed by award-winning director Robert Egan, The House is Black features Sussan Deyhim’s striking visual projections along with archival footage including Farrokhzad’s 1965 interview with Bernardo Bertolucci. The original score by Sussan Deyhim and Golden Globe-winning composer Richard Horowitz is rooted in Persian and Western contemporary classical music, jazz and electronic music.

As part of “The Persian Book Lecture Series”, the Library of Congress and Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at University of Maryland, College Park, present the documentary film, “Classical Persian Music – Hossein Omoumi from Isfahan to Irvine”. Partly funded by a grant from Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, the documentary introduces the history and beauty of classical Persian music through Professor Hossein Omoumi’s innovations in education and musical technology.

Dr. Omoumi, Maseeh Professor of Persian Performing Arts at the University of California, Irvine, is an internationally recognized musician, master of the Persian reed flute (ney), teacher and scholar. He has made it his life’s mission to provide global access to classical Persian music.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the Maestro himself. The event is free and open to the public.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016 | 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Thomas Jefferson Building, African Middle Eastern Reading Room, LJ-220 | Library of Congress

The San José State University Persian Studies Program invites you to attend “Engaging Iran and the Iranian Diaspora after the Nuclear Agreement: Opportunities and Challenges”, a multi-disciplinary conference and conversation that will be held at SJSU Martin Luther King Library on Friday, October 21, 2016. Panelists from SJSU College of Arts & Humanities, College of Social Sciences, and School of Business, as well as members of local nonprofits, will discuss the significance of the US/Iran Nuclear Agreement and the ways in which members of the Iranian diaspora and academic communities can sustain the historic agreement and build initiatives to engage with Iran.

The Keynote Address will be given by Dr. Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, and author of Engaging the Muslim World and the blog, Informed Comment. The conference will be followed by the world premiere of the stage adaptation of Together Tea, a novel by Marjan Kamali. Written and directed by Dr. Matthew Spangler, SJSU Professor of Theater Arts, the play features acclaimed actress Leyla Modirzadeh. All lectures are free and open to the public.