At Home in the World: Iranian Cosmopolitan Culture

The American Iranian Friendship Council, the Iranian Studies Advisory Board and the Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University proudly present:

Professor Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University
"At Home in the World: Iranian Cosmopolitan Culture"

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Portland State University,
Smith Student Union 338 (Vanport Room)
SW Broadway and SW Montgomery, Free
(free parking in PSU structure after 7 PM)

Professor Dabashi's talk will be based on his latest book "Iran: A People Interrupted," a political and cultural history of Iran (2006). Other well-known examples for Dr. Dabashi's 14 books include Authority in Islam; Theology of Discontent; Truth and Narrative; Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future; Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran; Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema; and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema. An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages. A selection of articles and interviews is available at www.hamiddabashi.com.

Born in1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.

He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies. He has also taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab and Iranian universities. In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Professor Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema.

A committed teacher for nearly three decades, Professor Dabashi is a public speaker around the globe, a current affair essayist, a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi and their daughter Chelgis, who will join him for his Portland visit.