Columbia University professor of Iranian Studies to give lecture on contemporary Iran

NEW PALTZ — Professor Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University, will give a lecture titled “Counter-Imagining the Empire: Iran and the Contemporary Middle East,” at 5 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 10, in Lecture Center 102 at the State University of New York at New Paltz campus.

Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and the chair of the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures Department at Columbia University and the director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Comparative Literature and Society. He received a dual Ph.D. in sociology of culture and Islamic studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. His research interests include the comparative study of cultures, the Islamic intellectual history, and the social and intellectual history of Iran — both modern and medieval.

Dabashi’s publications include “Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads” (1989); “Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran” (1993); “Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of Ayn Al-Qudat Al-Hamadhani” (1999); “Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (with Peter Chelkowski, 1999); and “Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future” (2001).

This lecture is sponsored by the Department of Economics, the Office of the Provost, the dean of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the Department of Political Science, the Department of History and the Economics Club.

This lecture is free and open to all. For more information, contact Hamid Azari azarih@newpaltz.edu, (845) 257-2944.