Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is pleased to announce a lecture and book signing by Dr. Ida Meftahi, speaking on her first book, Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage, as part of “The Persian Book Lecture Series” presented by the Library of Congress and Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Meftahi is a Visiting Assistant Professor in contemporary Iranian culture and society at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies. In addition to teaching, Dr. Meftahi is the director of the Lalehzar Street Digital Archive, a project of the Roshan Initiative for Digital Humanities, as well as faculty advisor for Roshangar: Roshan Undergraduate Journal for Persian Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations from the University of Toronto (2013) for which she received a Roshan Institute Fellowship for Persian Studies. Her book, Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage (Routledge, 2016) investigates the way dancing bodies have been providing evidence for competing representations of modernity, urbanism, and religiosity across the twentieth century.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016 | 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Thomas Jefferson Building, African Middle Eastern Reading Room, LJ-220 | Library of Congress

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Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to announce that Nicholas Boylston was awarded a Roshan Institute Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies for the completion of his dissertation in academic year 2016-2017. Mr. Boylston is currently in his final year of doctoral studies in the Department of Theological and Religious Studies at Georgetown University, where he is working under the direction of his advisor, Professor Paul Heck. His dissertation entitled, “Writing the Kaleidoscope of Reality, the Significance of Diversity in 6th-12th century Persian Metaphysical Literature: Sana’i, ‘Attar and ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani,” argues that the pluralist and perspectivist characteristics of the writings of these three Persian authors result from their conscious and original synthetic engagements with diverse discourses of their era, and that their works are best read holistically.

Mr. Boylston’s area of specialization is Persian literature and Islamic intellectual history through the lenses of religious, intellectual and literary pluralism. He was Preceptor of Persian in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University for academic year 2014-2015. Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute would like to commend Mr. Boylston for his contributions to Persian Studies scholarship and extends its best wishes for a successful year.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute mourns the passing of acclaimed Iranian film director, photographer, artist and poet, Abbas Kiarostami on July 4, 2016, in Paris at the age of 76. Kiarostami was one of the most influential Iranian artists, who gave the Iranian cinema the international credibility that it has today.

Kiarostami was born in 1940 in northern Iran. After a degree in fine art at Tehran University, he worked as a graphic designer and for a film ad agency before joining the Centre for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanun) in 1969. It was during his two decades at Kanun that Kiarostami worked on what is known as the Koker trilogy, the three films that established his international reputation as a director of considerable sensitivity and intellectual rigor: Where Is the Friend’s Home? (1987) won the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno film festival, Life, and Nothing More (1992) and Through the Olive Trees (1994). Kiarostami’s upward ascension as a major film director was confirmed in 1997, when his seventh feature, Taste of Cherry –a study of a man driving around looking for someone to help him commit suicide– was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is pleased to announce Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian Learning in the Ottoman World, 1400-1800, a lecture by Dr. Murat Umut Inan, hosted by the Persian and Iranian Studies Program and the Turkish and Ottoman Studies Program at the University of Washington.

Dr. Murat Umut Inan is the Ahmanson-Getty Post-Doctoral Fellow at the UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Centuries Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Washington in 2012. His research interests focus on Ottoman and Persian literatures, and on the literary, cultural and textual relations and transmissions in the medieval and early modern Islamic world. Currently, he is completing a book manuscript entitled Ottomans Reading Persian Classics: Literary Reception and Interpretation in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, where he explores the reception of Persian language and literary classics in Ottoman literature, scholarship, and society between 1300-1600.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016 | 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. | CMU 202 | University of Washington

The documentary film, “Classical Persian Music – Hossein Omoumi from Isfahan to Irvine”, was successfully premiered along with an educational concert by Professor Hossein Omoumi and his students on May 22, 2016, at the University of California Irvine. Funded in part with 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.

Following the success of the May premiere, with 250 in attendance, Professor Omoumi has been invited to bring the same program to the University of Maryland, College Park, on October 18; Swarthmore College on October 20; Oklahoma University on November 5; Oklahoma State University on November 6; and to London and Tehran the second half of November.

Watch the film trailer on YouTube

Opening April 27 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs, an international loan exhibition featuring spectacular works of art created under Seljuq rule, in the 11th through 13th centuries. The Seljuqs were a Turkic dynasty of Central Asian nomadic origin that established a vast, but relatively short-lived empire in West Asia (present-day Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey). On display at this special MET exhibition will be approximately 270 objects -including luster painted ceramics, silk textiles, manuscripts, and ornate metalwork- on loan from American, European, and Middle Eastern public and private collections. Many of the institutions have never lent works from their collections before. Organized by Sheila Canby, the Patti Cadby Birch Curator in Charge, Department of Islamic Art, the exhibition runs from April 27 through July 24, 2016.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is proud to announce the first issue of Roshangar, the undergraduate journal in Persian Studies at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, University of Maryland. This biannual academic publication is totally designed and run by a group of talented undergraduate students, under the guidance of former Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute Fellow, Ida Meftahi, Visiting Assistant Professor at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies.

The electronic copy of this peer-reviewed journal is available on the Roshangar website, which also features film and book reviews, interviews with scholars and artists, as well as highlights of local Persian events.

The Finale in the Roshan Institute Lecture Series will recognize the outstanding contribution of UMD undergraduate students to Persian Studies and the launch of Roshangar.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016 | 5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. | Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, Jmz1220 | University of Maryland College Park

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is proud to announce “Object in Context” at the Louvre Museum on April 5, 2016, from 9am to 5pm.

This day-long program will present the first results of two major research programs focusing on metal wares and metallic lustre wares from the Medieval Iranian World: Islametal and Medieval Kashi projects, both proudly funded by the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fund at the Louvre.

Islametal concerns the understanding of materials, techniques and gesture of creation that led to the production of metal wares in the Great Iranian World ( c.10th-15th centuries). One of its main goals is to find out how, where, for whom and in which production context those objects were made. The project is led by Annabelle Collinet from the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre, with the assistance of Vana Orfanou, the second Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fellow at the Louvre.

The Medieval Kâshi project focuses on Medieval Iranian tiles from the 13th–14th centuries. Their contextualization is based on the survey of main collections of Iranian lustre tiles in Iran, Europe, and the United States. This project is co-led by Delphine Miroudot from the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre and Dr. Maryam Kolbadinejad from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is pleased to announce a lecture and book signing with Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz, speaking on her new book Lyrics of Life: Sa’di on Love Cosmopolitanishm and Care of Self, as part of The Persian Book Lecture Series at the Library of Congress.

Dr. Keshavarz is the Roshan Institute Chair in Persian Studies and Director of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Maryland, College Park. She 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. In 2009, her NPR appearance on ‘On Being: The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi’ received the Peabody Award, and she received the Hershel Walker Peace and Justice Award.

Lyrics of Life 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.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016 | 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. | Thomas Jefferson Building, African Middle Eastern Reading Room, LJ-220 | Library of Congress

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Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, is presenting a free screening of Frame by Frame on Sunday February 21, 2016, from 5:00-7:00pm, at UMD Stamp Building.

Frame by Frame is an award-winning documentary about photojournalism and free speech in Afghanistan. Following the screening, producer and lead translator Baktash Ahadi will lead a discussion of key ideas reaised int eh film, including humanitarian issues, women’s rights, free speech, and the challenge of translating Persian.

The screening is free and open to the public.

Read more about this event at UMD