SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Kamran Djam 2012 Annual Lecture at SOAS: The Exilic Mode in Persian Literature

Professor Karimi-Hakkak's second talk will address the exilic mode in modern and contemporary poetry and prose of Iran, primarily in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with special emphasis on the last three decades. The talk will examine descriptions of various exilic environments and analyse topoi related to dreams of return and restoration in the works of figures as Gholamhossein Saedi, Nader Naderpur, Shahrokh Meskub, Yadolah Royai, Esmail Khoi, Reza Ghasemi, and others. Please see the attached programme for more information.

 

 

Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak is Professor of Persian Language, Literature, and Cultures at the University of Maryland and Founding Director of the University’s Roshan Center for Persian Studies. He has studied in Iran and the United States, receiving his PhD in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University in 1979.

Karimi-Hakkak is the author, editor or translator of over twenty books and around one hundred and fifty research articles. The study of languages, literatures and cultures in their various sociopolitical contexts and along the historical line has been at the center of his scholarship. He counts Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran (University of Utah Press, 1995), Essays on Nima Yushij: Animating Modernity in Persian Poetry (Brill, 2004), and Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (Arcade, 2005) as most representative of his contributions to the study of Persian literature in Iran.