Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies

The Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies has had a busy year as always, supporting research with some new positions, awards and initiatives; hosting guest speakers; and fostering community outreach efforts.

To enhance research, the Farzaneh Family Center was able to finance $160,000 for a two-year postdoctoral fellow position in Iranian studies. The fellow will be in residence at the University of Oklahoma during the term of the fellowship, teach one course per year in the Department of International and Area Studies, organize a lecture series, and participate in the intellectual life of the center. The application closed in April.

Along with the Center for Middle East Studies, the Farzaneh Family Center helped CIS Dean Scott Fritzen raise $300,000 to support Afghan scholars to come to OU, and the center donated $10,000 of its own money to rescue Afghan scholars at risk. Students engaged with the Afghan refugees and helped with translations. Shabnam Khalilyar was the first Omar Khayyam Scholar to arrive on campus, and Husnia Hazara and Mehri Rezaee followed.

This past year, the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies also hosted a Farzaneh Family Fellow, Arash Azizi of New York University, to carry out research in our Iranian Political Pamphlet Collection, which contains rare materials.

In 2021, the center awarded its first Jafar and Shokoh Farzaneh Prize for Best Article on Persian Literature. The committee read over 50 submissions and awarded Jane Mikkelson, Ph.D., a $2,000 prize for her article, “Flights of Imagination: Avicenna’s Phoenix (‘Anqā) and Bedil’s Figuration for the Lyric Self.”

In scholarship news, in 2021-2022, the center awarded 48 Farzaneh Family Scholarships for Iranian Students, for a total of $73,500 for their research and studies. The center also awarded $9,000 in scholarships to students studying the Persian language.

In 2021-2022 the Farzaneh Family Center kept up a full slate of events, bringing guest scholars from a range of fields to campus both virtually and in-person. In fall, the center hosted talks on Iran’s Economic Crisis with Saleh Sahabeh Tabrizy; Gender and Iranian Politics with Mateo Farzaneh; Iranian Interventions in the Arab World with Arash Azizi (NYU); and The Origins of Economic Development in Pahlavi Iran with IAS Professor Afshin Marashi. The center also hosted its annual Persian Poetry Night with OU Persian students.

In the spring, the center co-sponsored a Persian Classical Music Concert with Sandeep Das and the HUM Ensemble and a related seminar, “The Shared Musical, Historical, and Cultural Elements of the Indo-Persianate World.” They also hosted a talk on Iranian poetry and reading with writer, translator and scholar Kaveh Bassiri and a talk with Farzaneh Best Article Prize winner Jane Mikkelson, "Your Broken Colors: Fracture and Repair in Early Modern Persian Poetry."

Photo: Joshua Landis is the Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies, the director of the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies and the director of the Center for Middle East Studies.