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X-WR-CALNAME:Near Eastern Languages & Cultures - UCLA
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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Near Eastern Languages & Cultures - UCLA
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261202T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261202T180000
DTSTAMP:20261021T163648Z
CREATED:20261012T161100Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261021T163648Z
UID:21425-1796227200-1796234400@nelc.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Pourdavoud Lecture Series and Cunard Lecture Series: Beate Pongratz-Leisten
DESCRIPTION:Ancient Near Eastern Narratives: Making a Case for the Epistemic Function of Myth in Text and Image\nBeate Pongratz-Leisten\n(New York University)\nWednesday December 2\, 2026 at 4:00 pm Pacific Time\nRoyce Hall 306 and Via Zoom \nRegistration Link: https://forms.gle/aNCt12TXFDrfwULP7\nJoin Livestream Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/96272801601 \nThroughout its history\, Assyriological scholarship has turned to exploring many facets of ancient epistemology\, including lexical lists\, divinatory knowledge\, medicine\, mathematics\, pharmaceutical knowledge\, legal compendia\, and commentary literature. Two domains of knowledge production conspicuously have remained left out of the picture: mythic narratives and the image. \nThe book Myth\, Text\, and Image in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Narrative Reading of the World makes a case for establishing human thinking-in-images as an essential part of ancient Mesopotamian reasoning based in the fact that in the human mind\, imagistic thinking exists alongside rational logical thought. Due to their orientational and expository nature\, story-telling and myth-making can claim their rightful place as systems of knowledge. Mythic narrative as realized in text and image is an analytical tool that offers insight into life experiences\, conveys cultural knowledge\, provides potential models for decision-making and behavior\, and/or explains existing cultic realities as well as socio-political structures and hierarchies. \nDrawing on insights from cognitive narratology\, cognitive semiotics\, and visual studies\, the book explores how myth as episteme\, that is\, as a system of knowledge and part of cognitive and cultural experience\, serves as an explanatory system and a way of world-making in that it not only reflects\, but also constitutes reality. Past events or core metaphors—mythical or historical—are reactivated in the memory\, while the inclination for emplotment creates coherence and meaning for the present. The process of reworking and re-actualization in text and image is selective and innovative\, forever interpreting\, constructing\, re-inventing\, and reconstructing the past and establishing tropes from the stream of tradition. Narrative knowledge is not simply a recollection of the past\, but a product of narrative understanding\, a retrospective\, interpretative composition\, viewing\, or reception. \nCo-sponsored by the Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World and the Jeffrey P. Cunard Center for Global Antiquity. \nAbout the Speaker\nBeate Pongratz-Leisten is Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World\, New York University. She is a cultural historian of the Ancient Near East. Her research interests include the political\, intellectual\, and religious history of Western Asia\, materialities of culture\, literature\, formation of textual communities\, transmission of cultural memory\, ritual performance and ritual texts\, text and image\, and knowledge production. Her publications include several books on the cultural and religious history of ancient Mesopotamia\, among them more recently Reconsidering the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism (2011)\, Religion and Ideology in Assyria (2015)\, a volume of collected articles Materiality of Divine Agency (2015) co-edited with Karen Sonik\, and Myth\, Text\, and Image: A Narrative Reading of the World (2026). Currently she is working on a monograph\, Image and Knowledge Production: The Social Construction of the Visual and the Construction of the Visual in Early Mesopotamia. Together with her Co-PI Elizabeth Knott\, she is heading the edition of Akkadian Rituals for the series Writings from the Ancient World\, and she is editor-in-chief of Ancient Literature for Old Testament Studies.
URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/pourdavoud-lecture-series-and-cunard-lecture-series-beate-pongratz-leisten/
LOCATION:Royce 306
CATEGORIES:Cunard Center,Iranian,Pourdavoud Institute
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-12-02_Pongratz-Leisten_web-image-v3.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261213T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261213T180000
DTSTAMP:20261026T211825Z
CREATED:20261026T211825Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261026T211825Z
UID:21479-1797177600-1797184800@nelc.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Bilingual Lecture Series: Afshin Matin-Asgari
DESCRIPTION:An Update on the US-Israeli War on Iran\nAfshin Matin-Asgar\nCalifornia State University\, Los Angeles\nSunday\, December 13\, 2026 \nLecture in Persian \nRoyce Hall 314\, 4:00pm \nZoom link for hybrid online viewing: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/97189398973\nRegistration requested: https://forms.gle/NvbydTUWyWui9x9z7 \nBased on the research published in\, Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations\, this book talk will briefly review the events leading to the US-Israeli war on Iran\, followed by a summary of the most recent developments in the war and a discussion of how they are interpreted by Iranian and international scholars and political observers. \n  \n  \nAfshin Matin-Asgari is professor emeritus of modern Middle East history at California State University\, Los Angeles. His specialty is 20th century Iranian intellectual and political history\, particularly leftist movements. He is the author of Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah: 1960s-1970s (Mazda Publishers\, 2002)\, Both Eastern and Western: An Intellectual History of Iranian Modernity (Cambridge University Press\, 2018) and Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations (Verso Publishers\, 2026)\, as well as more than thirty articles and book chapters.
URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/bilingual-lecture-series-afshin-matin-asgari/
LOCATION:Royce Hall 314\, 340 Royce Drive\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States
CATEGORIES:Humanities,Iranian
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-12-13_Matin-Asgari-web-image.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20270113T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20270113T180000
DTSTAMP:20261021T170946Z
CREATED:20261021T163544Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261021T170946Z
UID:21444-1799856000-1799863200@nelc.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Yarshater Lecture Series: Florian Schwarz
DESCRIPTION:Myth\, Literature\, and Geography in Transoxiana from Late Antiquity to the Early Islamic Period: Siyavash at Bukhara\nFlorian Schwarz\n(Austrian Academy of Sciences)\nWednesday January 13\, 2027 at 4:00 pm Pacific Time\nRoyce Hall 306 and Via Zoom \nRegistration Link: https://forms.gle/VgZ8xmueie9azyLE7\nJoin Livestream Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95409975203 \nThe conquest of Transoxiana\, the region beyond the river Oxus (Amu Darya)\, in the 7th to 8th centuries is generally regarded as a major historical watershed in the history of Central Asia. This view obscures deeper processes of transformation that affected the entire eastern Iranian world since long before the end of the Sasanian empire. The ideological shifts and re-ordering of the geography of power in late antique eastern Iran and Central Asia came along with a re-framing of the mythical geography of Iranian epic narratives. This presentation explores the underlying historical processes behind the complex literary representations of the story of Siyavash\, the tragic hero whose story and memory became deeply enmeshed with the historical transformations in the late antique and early Islamic Iranian East. \n  \nAbout the Speaker\nFlorian Schwarz is Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and affiliate professor at the University of Vienna. He previously taught at the Ruhr University of Bochum and the University of Washington in Seattle. His work on the history of Iran and Central Asia from late antiquity to the early 20th century includes research on Sufi communities\, manuscript culture\, transimperial elites\, urban history\, and rural spaces. He is particularly interested in long-term transformations\, borderlands\, and trans-regional and trans-/non-imperial spaces. Among his recent publications\, a book-length chapter titled “Land Behind Bukhara” (2022)\, explores the emergence and transformation of the oasis of Bukhara as a historical landscape from antiquity to the early modern period. The author or co-editor of nine books\, he serves on the editorial boards of the Brill Handbook of Oriental Studies\, Section 1: The Near and Middle East\, two Iranian Studies monograph series for the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press\, and the book series Afro-Eurasian Transformations (Harrassowitz).
URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/yarshater-lecture-series-florian-schwarz/
LOCATION:Royce 306
CATEGORIES:Iranian,Yarshater Center
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2027-01-13-Schwartz-web-image.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20270127T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20270127T180000
DTSTAMP:20261021T163624Z
CREATED:20261012T161655Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261021T163624Z
UID:21433-1801065600-1801072800@nelc.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Pourdavoud Lecture Series: John Hyland
DESCRIPTION:Persia’s Greek Campaigns: Approaches to Historical Reconstruction and Political Myth\nJohn Hyland\n(Christopher Newport University)\nWednesday January 27\, 2027 at 4:00 pm Pacific Time\nRoyce Hall 306 and Via Zoom \nRegistration Link: https://forms.gle/PEZw9xf3oFGjXzZk8\nJoin Livestream Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95846831926 \nAchaemenid Persia’s expeditions against the Greek city-states in the early 5th century BCE are the most (in)famous events in the empire’s history\, crucial to Greco-Roman stereotypes of the “Barbarian” and misleading narratives of Persian decadence and decline. In the absence of Achaemenid narratives to counter the Greek source tradition\, the so-called “Persian Wars” are widely perceived as failures of an over-extended empire against outnumbered\, but militarily superior Greek defenders. Modern receptions have transformed the memory of these events into a powerful political myth\, which represents Greek victories over Persia as origin points for European civilization and symbols of liberty’s ability to overcome imperial despotism. France\, Britain\, the United States\, and other world powers\, not to mention modern Greece\, have vied to represent themselves as heirs to this ancient Greek heroic tradition\, while depicting their enemies as heirs to Xerxes’ Persia and its ultimate failure. Modern Iran\, in turn\, has grappled repeatedly with problems of external perception rooted in hostile Persian War myth. The current war adds particular urgency to the challenge of disentangling the complex ancient history from its modern ideological representations. \nFortunately\, disciplinary progress and emerging evidence now permits more critical historical approaches to Achaemenid contexts and perspectives on Persian-Greek conflicts. Drawing on the speaker’s recent book\, Persia’s Greek Campaigns (Oxford\, 2025)\, this talk will demonstrate the possibilities for historical reconstruction. Examining Xerxes’ effective use of campaign “spectacles” to project imperial power\, problematizing the sources’ depictions of Greek military superiority\, and highlighting iconographic evidence that the Achaemenids represented their Greek campaigns as victories\, the talk will offer a more complex picture of imperial frontier interactions that challenges the modern uses and abuses of the Persian War tradition. \n  \nAbout the Speaker\nJohn Hyland is a Professor in the Department of History at Christopher Newport University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World at the University of Chicago (2005)\, and has written or co-edited three books\, including Brill’s Companion to War in the Ancient Iranian Empires (Brill\, 2025) and Persia’s Greek Campaigns: Kingship\, War\, and Spectacle on the Achaemenid Frontier (Oxford\, 2025). His next project will explore the modern afterlife of the Persian Wars as a contested political symbol between the United States\, Britain\, France\, Greece\, and Iran.
URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/pourdavoud-lecture-series-john-hyland/
LOCATION:Royce 306
CATEGORIES:Iranian,Pourdavoud Institute
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2027-01-27_Hyland-web-image.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20270217T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20270217T180000
DTSTAMP:20261021T170951Z
CREATED:20261021T170902Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261021T170951Z
UID:21450-1802880000-1802887200@nelc.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Yarshater Lecture Series: Rudi Matthee
DESCRIPTION:Civil Society and the Public Sphere in Early Modern Iran\nRudi Matthee\n(University of Delaware)\nWednesday February 17\, 2027 at 4:00 pm Pacific Time\nRoyce Hall 306 and Via Zoom \nRegistration Link: https://forms.gle/NNDEfuGBqMDGzP9E6\nJoin Livestream Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/91096921973 \nAn old Orientalist trope going back to early modern Western observers holds that a despotic state assisted by a suffocating faith\, Islam\, crowded out manifestations of public life in Islamic societies by stifling popular self-articulation\, preventing the emergence of civic pride\, and disallowing civil disobedience beyond bread riots. This presentation takes issue with this portrayal of a populace cowering in fear in the face of overpowering authority and extends existing revisionist scholarship on the issue to Safavid and Qajar Iran\, with the argument that Iran has a strong tradition of civic mindedness. This comes out in 1.) the remarkably accessible Safavid shah\, 2.) the urban maydan as an agora-like public space\, 3.) a culture that fostered intellectual debate and even countenanced freedom of conscience\, 4.) the centrality of justice and its pursuit in Iranian mythology\, 5.) epic poetry and manuals of manners and morals\, and 6.) the civic pride and communal historical consciousness that helped the elites of the scattered oases on the Iranian plateau preserve local self-rule and social purpose. Early modern Iran\, therefore\, knew an implicit “social contract\,” between subjects\, who\, though not citizens in the modern sense of the word\, claimed rights\, including the right to dissent. Their government\, which\, though often despotic\, was bound by limits that\, of needs\, it had to observe. \n  \nAbout the Speaker\nRudi Matthee obtained both a BA and an MA in Oriental Languages and Cultures from Utrecht University\, the Netherlands\, and a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of California\, Los Angeles. He serves as the John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Delaware. He has authored five books\, most recently Angels Tapping at the Wine-shop’s Door: A History of Alcohol in the Islamic World (Oxford UP\, 2023)\, four of which received awards. Matthee also has (co-)edited six volumes\, most recently The Safavid World (Routledge\, 2021). He currently serves as the President of the Persian Heritage Foundation. He is a two-time fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study\, Princeton (2002–2003 and 2017). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2026.
URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/yarshater-lecture-series-rudi-matthee/
LOCATION:Royce 306
CATEGORIES:Iranian,Yarshater Center
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2027-02-17-Matthee-web-image.jpg
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