Persian and Iranian Studies in Honor of Heshmat Moayyad
A Two-day Conference at the University of Chicago
Franke Institute, University of Chicago, 8 – 9 March 2019
Preliminary Schedule (1 February 2019)
DAY 1: Friday 8 March, Franke Institute, Regenstein Library
8:30am Coffee & Refreshments
Panel I: In Memory of Our Ostad, Prof. Heshmat Moayyad (1927-2018)
Chair: John Woods, NELC, University of Chicago
9:00am “Heshmat Moayyad: Iranian Baha’i Scholar”
-- Franklin Lewis
Chair, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago
9:25am Poem for Ostad Moayyad
-- Saeed Yousef (Ghahremani)
Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of
Chicago
9:35am “Religious syncretism and Social Change: Jews of Hamadan, 1880s to
1920s”
-- Mehrdad Amanat
Fellow, Iranian Studies Initiative, University of California Santa Barbara
10:20am Discussion
10:35-10:45am Coffee
Panel II: Khorasani Sufism and the Articulation of an Iranian Islamic Spirituality
Chair: Thibaut d’Hubert, South Asian Languages & Civilizations, UChicago
10:45am “From Blessed Lips: The Textualization of Abu Saʿid’s Dicta and Deeds”
-- Austin O'Malley
School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of
Arizona
11:30am “Shaykh Ahmad-e Jâm, the Colossal Elephant, Revisited”
-- Franklin Lewis
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University
of Chicago
12:15pm Discussion
12:30-2:00 Lunch
Panel III: Persian Narrative Poetry and the Creation of Literary Identity
Chair: John Perry, emeritus, NELC, University of Chicago
2:00pm “‘The Earth My Throne, The Heavens My Crown’:
Siyavash as Supranational Hero in Firdawsi’s Shahnama
-- Alyssa Gabbay
Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina,
Greensboro
2:45pm “The Sources of Varqa and Golshāh”
-- Cameron Cross
Department of Middle East Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
3:30pm Discussion
3:45-4:00 Coffee
Panel IV: Persian and the Post-Mongol Global Persianate
Chair: Cornell Fleischer, NELC, University of Chicago
4:00pm “Nef‘i and the Persistence of Persian Poetic Production among Ottoman
Literati in the Seventeenth Century”
-- Sooyong Kim
Department of English Language and Comparative Literature, Koç
University, Istanbul
4:45pm “‘Over above and under below’: The Description of Poetry in Zohuri’s
Saqi-nama"
--Paul Losensky
Departments of Comparative Literature, and Central Eurasian Studies,
Indiana University, Bloomington
5:30pm Discussion
6:30-8:30pm Conference Dinner at the Quad Club
DAY 2: Saturday 9 March, Franke Institute, Regenstein Library
9:00am Coffee and Refreshments
Panel V: Babi and Baha’i Studies
Chair: Orit Bashkin, Center for Middle Eastern Studies and NELC, Univ. of Chicago
9:30am “The Mystical Poetics of Exegesis: The Bab’s Tafsir surat al-baqara”
-- Todd Lawson
Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, Emeritus,
University of Toronto
10:15am “New Considerations about Tahirih Qurrat al-`Ayn: Her Activism,
Theology & Poetry
--Abbas Amanat
Department of History, Yale University
11:00am “Pathologizing Iran: How Medical Concepts were Deployed in
Anti-Baha’i Discourse”
Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi
Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto, Missasauga
11:45am Discussion
Noon- 1:15pm Lunch
Panel VI: Recovering the Voices of Women in Persian Literature
Chair: Judith Wilks, Northwestern University (retired)
1:15pm “Making Room in the Canon for Two Early Persian Poets: Rabi`a and
Mahsati”
--Sunil Sharma
Department of World Languages and Literatures, Boston University
2:00pm “Fakhr-e Ozma Arghun: poet of late Qajar and early Pahlavi Iran”
-- Dominic Parviz Brookshaw
University of Oxford
2:45pm “Forough Farrokhzad: 50 years after her death”
-- Farzaneh Milani
Depts. of Women, Gender & Sexuality, and Middle Eastern and South
Asian Languages & Cultures, University of Virginia
3:30pm Discussion
3:45-4:00pm Coffee
PANEL VII: Fiction and Film in Iran, 20th and 21st Centuries
Chair: Holly Shissler, Center for Middle Eastern Studies and NELC, Univ. of Chicago
4:00pm “State-Sponsored Serial Murder in Film and Fiction Banned in Iran"
--Paul Sprachman
Rutgers University (Retired)
4:45pm “The Love Song of M. Sadegh Hedayat: The Blind Owl Revisited”
-- Michael Hillmann
Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas, Austin
5:30pm Discussion and Summation
6:00pm Reception