Please join the UCLA Iranian Studies Outreach Program for the first talk of the Bilingual Lecture Series of the 2018-2019 academic year.  Dr. Afshin Matin-Asgari will present his research in Dodd Hall 121 on November 25, 2018 at 4:00pm.  This lecture will be in Persian.  Please see the attached flyer for details.  Self-pay parking for $12 in Lot 2 is recommended.

هم شرقی و هم غربی: نظری به تاریخ مدرنیته در ایران

Both East and West: A Commentary on the History of Modernity in Iran

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, many observers of Iran have viewed a country torn between Eastern history and ‘Western’ modernity.  This divide between religion and secularity has couched the analysis of political philosophy preceding the Revolution in this later dichotomy.  Afshin Matin-Asgari instead proposes a revisionist work of intellectual history, challenging many of the dominant paradigms in Iranian and Middle Eastern historiography.  In charting the intellectual construction of Iranian modernity, he focuses on broad patterns of influential ideas, which reveal an Iranian modernity that has been sustained by intense intellectual interaction with global ideologies.  Turning many prevailing narratives on their heads, the Matin-Asgari concludes that modern Iran can be seen as, culturally and intellectually, both Eastern and Western.

About the Speaker

Dr. Afshin Matin-Asgari holds the title of Outstanding Professor of Middle East history at California State University, LA. He was born in Iran and completed his Ph.D. in Middle East history at UCLA. He was active in the international movement of Iranian students during the 1970s and took part in the 1978–1979 Iranian Revolution. He is the author of Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah (2002), which has been translated into Persian. Matin-Asgari has authored more than twenty articles and book chapters on twentieth-century Iranian political and intellectual history.