Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is pleased to sponsor the conference, Writing the Iranian Revolution: Memory, Testimony, Time, on May 12-13, 2017, at the University of Washington. The conference is organized by Dr. Selim Kuru, Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, and Director of the Persian and Iranian Studies Program.
The conference will take a critical look at the 1979 Iranian Revolution as represented in essays, fiction, poetry, memoir, speeches, film, and other arts, and examine the ways that writers, artists, politicians, and intellectuals have depicted the origins and development of the Islamic Republic and the legacy of the revolution in Iranian society and culture today.
The opening keynote lecture, “Imam Hussein and the Little Black Fish: Literary Tropes and Political Allegories of the Iranian Revolution,” will be presented by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In this talk, Professor Ghamari will discuss how such bifurcated narratives fail to capture the spirit that gave rise to the revolutionary movement, a spirit that had roots in cultural, literary, historical, and political singularities of the period.
The conference will close with a performance by the Hamsaz Ensemble, featuring Bahar Movahed (vocals), Ali Samadpour (tar), Shahin Shahbazi (tar), Payam Yousef (kamancheh), Babak Daneshvar (oud), and Sina Dehghan (percussion). They will perform an evening of original and traditional Persian music sung to the poetry of Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Mehdi Akhavan-Saless, and M.R. Shafi’i-Kadkani.
Keynote lecture: Friday, May 12, 2017 | 7:00-8:30 PM | Kane Hall, Room 225
Conference: Saturday, May 13, 2017 | 9:00 AM-5:00 PM | Denny Hall, Room 213
Hamsaz Ensemble: Neishapur Nights: Saturday, May 13, 2017 | 8:00-10:15 PM | Town Hall Seattle