Parse: An Exploration of Critical Topics in Iranian Studies

Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies

Welcome to Parse, the official podcast of the Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto! In Persian, “Parse” means strolling or wandering around as an observer of contemporary life and modernity. In a similar spirit, our podcast Parse aims to take our listeners on an intellectual stroll in the field of Iranian Studies. Join Parse's host, Yasamin Jameh, in exploring and understanding the ideas of leading thinkers, academics, and authors in Iranian Studies.

  1. Yann Damizen: Songs from Beyond the Grave

    03/05/2024

    Yann Damizen: Songs from Beyond the Grave

    In the 90th episode of Parse, dive into the poetic retelling of Nizami Ganjavi’s timeless love poem, Leyli u Majnun, by the award-winning  poet and illustrator, Yann Damizen. In this book launch, you will hear from Aqsa Ijaz and Thomas Harrison who recently have translated Damizen’s work from French to English.   Dive into the poetic retelling of Nizami Ganjavi’s timeless love poem, Leyli u Majnun, by the award-winning  poet and illustrator, Yann Damizen. Majnun and Layla: Songs from Beyond the Grave Translated from French by Aqsa Ijaz and Thomas Harrison. Why do ancient tales resonate deeply even today? What makes a medieval classic relevant in our fast-paced, tech-driven world? In Persian literary culture, retelling the narratives of the past was more than mere repetition. It was about bestowing contemporary readers with the rich legacies of the past, offering them guidance and grounding to imagine a more equitable future. These retellings bore a transformative potential, challenging the established narratives, renewing them for the present, while ensuring their continued relevance. With Majnun and Layla: Songs from Beyond the Grave, Damizen revives this tradition, reimagining Nizami’s iconic tale of love, madness, and loss. For the first time, the story is retold from Leyli’s perspective, breaking the chains of poetic authority that silenced her for centuries.

    17 min
  2. Carlo Cereti: Eschatology and Apocalyptic Literature in the Zoroastrian Context

    03/05/2024

    Carlo Cereti: Eschatology and Apocalyptic Literature in the Zoroastrian Context

    In the 89th episode of Parse, Professor Carlo Cereti will present and discuss several passages taken from the Avesta and from Pahlavi literature, highlighting the chronological development of Zoroastrian thought about the end of times. The earliest texts to be discussed date to the early Achaemenid or immediately pre-Achaemenid period, while the later ones reflect Zoroastrian speculation in late Sasanian and early Islamic times.   Carlo G. Cereti has newly joined the University of California as Endowed Ferdowsi Chair in Zoroastrian Studies and Professor of Classics and Religions, having served since 2000 as Full Professor of Iranian Studies at Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Ancient World Studies. From 2009 to 2017 he acted as Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy of Italy in Tehran. His earliest research work focused on the history of the Zoroastrian Parsi community in India, an intellectual interest that continued throughout his academic career, though currently his main research field shifted to Middle Iranian Languages and Literatures and more specifically to the study of Zoroastrian literature in Middle Persian.   To watch the full talk, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaXUp3YTu6o&t=531s

    15 min
  3. Nicholas Sims-Williams: Bactrian Documents and Archives

    03/05/2024

    Nicholas Sims-Williams: Bactrian Documents and Archives

    The 88th episode of Parse is an excerpt of a presentation given by Professor Nicolas Sims-Williams on surviving documents in the ancient Bactrian language, an Eastern Iranian language that has long been extinct. Numerous documents in Bactrian dating from the 4th-8th century CE have emerged since the early 1990s. They include letters, legal contracts and economic documents, mostly written on parchment; some of the latest documents are associated with a group of Arabic legal documents and tax receipts. Although there is no reliable information about where the documents were found, the majority can be shown from internal evidence to have been written in various parts of Northern Afghanistan. Very recently, a further collection of 4th-century Bactrian letters has come to light. These are written on birch bark and almost certainly come from somewhere to the south of the Hindukush. Dr. Sims-Williams describe these two groups of documents and discusses the question of whether either can be considered as constituting a single archive.   Nicholas Sims-Williams is an Emeritus Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies at SOAS University of London. He has published many books and articles on Middle Iranian texts and languages, including three volumes of Bactrian documents from Northern Afghanistan.    To watch the full talk, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1_b8k0D_PA&t=443s

    18 min
  4. Shiva Ahmad: Apocalyptic Playland

    03/05/2024

    Shiva Ahmad: Apocalyptic Playland

    In the 87th episode of Parse, Learn more about the carefully illustrated worlds of celebrated artist Shiva Ahmadi, one of the featured artists in the exhibition Being & Belonging: Contemporary Women Artists from the Islamic World and Beyond, which took place in the ROM July2023 to January 2024. In this illustrated talk, Ahmadi shares deep insight into her personal and professional histories, and how they filter through and are expressed in her creative work.  Shiva Ahmadi‘s works cover a broad diversity of media, including watercolour painting, sculpture, and video animation. Having come of age in the tumultuous years following the Iranian Revolution, Ahmadi moved to the United States in 1998 and has been based in California since 2015. Borrowing from the artistic traditions of Iran and the Middle East, she critically examines global political tensions and social concerns to create striking, provocative, and powerful creations.  To watch the full talk, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqxFi-02E90

    11 min
  5. Jenny Rose: "A Nice Morality", Early Meetings between Zoroastrians and Americans

    20/04/2024

    Jenny Rose: "A Nice Morality", Early Meetings between Zoroastrians and Americans

    The 86th episode of Parse, is an except of Jenny Rose’s illustrated talk, based on research for her most recent book – Between Boston and Bombay: Cultural and Commercial Encounters of Yankees and Parsis 1771-1865 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Her book focuses on the early contact of Americans with Zoroastrians and their religion from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. American interest in the “Persian Religion” was informed initially through secondhand reports, but once direct trade with India was established close links were formed with Parsi merchants in Mumbai, which are documented in personal letters, journals, and logbooks now held in American libraries. This presentation explores some of these first-hand American records before a brief look at accounts of a few Parsis who made their way to North America at the time of the Civil War.  Jenny Rose is an adjunct professor and historian of religions in the Zoroastrian Studies program in Claremont Graduate University’s Religion Department. She holds a doctorate in Ancient Iranian Studies from Columbia University.Rose lectures extensively at other academic institutions, museums, and Zoroastrian Association events throughout North America and Europe. She also leads study tours of some of the most important archaeological, cultural, and devotional sites in Iran and Central Asia.    To watch the full talk, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNSPZhRXLYM&t=816s

    18 min
  6. Leila Pourtavaf: Gender in the Qajar Archives

    20/04/2024

    Leila Pourtavaf: Gender in the Qajar Archives

    The 85th episode of Parse provides some reflections on the archival traces of the Gulistan harem and its residents during Nasir al-Din Shah’s reign (1848-1896). The Gulistan harem was a woman-dominated homosocial space, housed in a unique domestic institution wherein tradition, modernity, piety, cosmopolitanism, gender, class and racial differences were negotiated by a host of local and transnational residents and visitors. Leila Pourtavaf examines the complex social and physical structure of this institution and the everyday life of its residents—at various points estimated to be between 700 and 2000 wives and female relatives, as well as different classes of employees. An abundance of historical traces and archival documents left behind by these constituents mark the late-Qajar harem as fertile ground for exploring the historical, cultural, spatial, and gendered entanglements which defined the Iranian modernization project in the second half of the 19th century.  Leila Pourtavaf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at York University. Her research and teaching stand at the intersection of gender, modernity, and Middle Eastern history.  Dr. Pourtavaf is also a board member and faculty affiliate at the Tavakoli Archives in Toronto and the recipient of the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Scholar Award for 2023-2024.  To watch the full talk, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LbGVrr5jc8

    17 min
  7. Supriya Gandhi: Munshis and their “Successors”

    20/04/2024

    Supriya Gandhi: Munshis and their “Successors”

    The 84th episode of Parse is on Aziz Ahmad’s observations on “Hindu historiography,” in his book, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment. The speaker in this talk, Supriya Gandhi, examines select Persian writings by eighteenth and nineteenth-century Hindu scribes and ask how they might illuminate the complex genealogies of modern Hindu thought.    Dr. Gandhi is a historian of South Asian religions who teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. Her current book project draws on a corpus of neglected Persian and Urdu works to explore histories of religious universalism and secularism in modern India. Gandhi grew up in India and studied there as well as in the United Kingdom, Iran, and Syria before earning her doctorate at Harvard University. Her research has been supported by grants from the Fulbright and ACLS/Mellon foundations.    To watch the full talk, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XTzA_5kNws&t=3435s

    13 min
  8. Parisa Vaziri: Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery

    20/04/2024

    Parisa Vaziri: Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery

    Bringing together cinema studies, Middle East studies, Black studies, and postcolonial theory, Parisa Vaziri’s new book, Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery explores African enslavement in the Indian Ocean through the little-known history of Iranian cinema. It shows that Iranian film reveals a resistance to facticity representative of the history of African enslavement in the Indian Ocean and preserves the legacy of African slavery in ways that resist its overpowering erasure in the popular and historical imagination.  Parisa Vaziri is an assistant professor of comparative literature at Cornell University. Her research and teaching interests explore critiques of history and the subject, as articulated primarily by black critical thought, poststructuralist theory, and film and media studies.    To watch the full talk, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEd47-fuI5M&t=1635s

    18 min
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About

Welcome to Parse, the official podcast of the Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto! In Persian, “Parse” means strolling or wandering around as an observer of contemporary life and modernity. In a similar spirit, our podcast Parse aims to take our listeners on an intellectual stroll in the field of Iranian Studies. Join Parse's host, Yasamin Jameh, in exploring and understanding the ideas of leading thinkers, academics, and authors in Iranian Studies.

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