The Iranian studies program at UCLA is a beating heart rich with history and literature. Along with centers dedicated to the study of ancient Iranian and Persian literary traditions, the Program of Iranian Studies is the foothold to one of the most overlooked historical empires. Persian poetry and literature stand at the forefront of the iconic artistic traditions and works of the Persian world. They create a different way of thinking about love, beauty, history and identity.
For Dr. Sahba Shayani, lecturer of Persian language, that shift began long before graduate school. His family is from Iran, and he was born and raised mostly in the Bay Area, where the local Iranian community was not as visible as it is in Los Angeles. Even so, Persian poetry was always present for him. Family members recited verses at gatherings, and lines were sung almost casually. Literature and especially poetry, he explained, occupy a central place in Persian culture, similar to the role philosophy plays in Greek tradition. Poetry is where stories, values and mottos are preserved and passed down.
When he transferred to UCLA from Diablo Valley College, he arrived as someone who already loved literature in English. He majored in English and minored in Iranian studies. He then turned to Persian language and literature. Encouraged by his former Persian teacher, he applied for a combined Master’s and PhD in Iranian Studies. That decision led to years of advanced study, a faculty position at the University of Oxford teaching Persian and finally a return to UCLA as a lecturer, stepping into the role once held by the same teacher who first encouraged him. He said, “UCLA has been a full circle moment.”
“But it also felt like every step that I took felt like some sort of, I like to say, divine confirmation, where like I took the first step and then something else opened up in front of me, you know?” Each risk opened a new door for him — from England to his current classroom in Westwood.
Dr. Shayani said his journey to Persian language and literature “led me to beautiful experiences and meeting beautiful people and having life-changing, transformative experiences.”
The UCLA Iranian studies program sits at an unusual intersection of language, literature and community. Established in the early 1960s and now described by the university as the largest and most comprehensive doctoral program of its kind in the Americas, it offers students a way into Persian language and poetry as part of a broader humanities education.
Throughout this path, he said poetry has been central to how he understands Iranian culture. He explained that “literature, and especially poetry, to the Persians is like philosophy to the Greeks.” He described it as what Iranians are known for and as the medium through which “our ethos and our life experiences and our mottos are repeated through and passed down.” He gave a simple everyday example from Iran. A person might get into a taxi, and the driver will recite a verse of classical poetry that fits whatever topic they are discussing. His description shows that poetry is not only an academic subject but also a living reference point in daily conversation.
He also spoke about how Persian concepts of beauty and love appear in the poetry he teaches. In many classical texts, the beloved is described through features such as thick eyebrows, long dark eyelashes and beauty marks. The eyelashes are compared to arrows and the eyebrow to a bow that sends those arrows into the heart of the lover. He tells his heritage students that these images represent a long-standing literary standard of beauty and that seeing themselves reflected in that tradition can be important, especially in settings where Western ideals dominate visual culture. He emphasizes that his goal is not to elevate one culture above another but to give students “an understanding of where you come from and of your inherent grace and greatness.” And “for my non-heritage students, I want them to walk away with a love and a deeper understanding of the Persianate world.” He emphasized the importance of bringing cultural diversity into the conversation of literature.
In the same interview, he connected these classroom experiences to the broader structure of Iranian studies at UCLA. The program offers three years of modern Persian, which he notes “has not changed much since the tenth century,” with elementary, intermediate and advanced levels, followed by courses in literature. There are also specialized offerings, such as a Judeo Persian class that introduces the history and writings of the Jewish Iranian community. Alongside modern courses, students can study older stages of the language through classes in so-called Old Iranian and Middle Iranian. Together, these offerings create what he calls a robust literary and linguistic program.
Shayani also described the institutional environment around that program. He pointed to the Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World, which focuses on ancient Iran, and the Yarshater Center for the Study of Iranian Literary Traditions, which concentrates on literary texts. These units support research, public lectures and archival projects that frame Iranian studies as a long historical field rather than a narrow contemporary topic.
One major theme in his comments is the influence of Persian literature beyond Iran. He described Persian literature as “the jewel in the crown of our culture and our heritage” and argued that it has been overlooked for a long time. He noted that there is “a huge mystical tradition” within Persian poetry that has overlapped with other traditions. As one example he mentioned Rumi, a key literary figure whose works have become widely read in English translation. He pointed out that some popular English versions are “re-renditions or poetry inspired by him” rather than direct translations, but he still sees the strong reception as evidence that people connect to the ideas in the poems.
He then turned to Omar Khayyam, who wrote quatrains about the fleeting nature of the world and the importance of the present moment. Khayyam lived many centuries ago, yet Shayani emphasized that these topics are often treated as modern concerns. He connected Khayyam to Edward FitzGerald, who produced a well-known English rendering of the quatrains in the 1860s. That version, he said, “took off like wildfire in the West” and made Khayyam familiar to many readers who do not read Persian.
Shayani also argued that Persian stories have shaped narratives that readers tend to think of as European. He mentioned an Iranian story with a similar structure and ending to “Romeo and Juliet” that appears in the 13th century, and he pointed out that an archetype similar to Rapunzel already exists in the epic “Shahnameh.” For him, these examples show that Persian literature has contributed to global narrative patterns in ways that are not always acknowledged in standard curricula.
He explained that the Pourdavoud Institute is involved in “reviving this legacy and putting it in the larger context of antiquity,” which includes placing ancient Iran alongside Greece and Rome.
A second perspective on Persian poetry at UCLA comes from professor Allison Kanner-Botan in the department of comparative literature. She came to UCLA about two years ago after completing a PhD in Chicago and a postdoctoral position at the University of Colorado Boulder. She explained that she is working on a book about romantic epics in Persian and Arabic literature.
Her own path into this field began with philosophy and with the same type of Western great books courses that many humanities students know. As an undergraduate, she wrote a thesis in Islamic philosophy. She said that she had taken “very nerdy and in-depth great books classes,” where students read the classics of Western civilization, such as Shakespeare and Aristotle. During that time, she encountered the works of Ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna. She was struck by “how they thought about the relationship between revelation and reason” and found that discussion to be “really rich.” That experience led her toward Islamic intellectual history and then into medieval and early modern literary culture in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and English.
Kanner-Botan described Persian as a prestige vernacular in many premodern contexts, used at courts and in administrative settings and acting as an interlocutor with local languages in regions such as South and Southeast Asia. She emphasized that Persian poetry has an “extremely rich vocabulary” for the heart in which many ideas and images connect back to concepts of love and feeling. In her teaching, she brings those concepts into conversation with students who may have only read English language texts.
She explained that in many humanities programs people are trained primarily in Western European literature and theory. In that context, it is common to approach topics such as love, desire or community through frameworks like psychoanalysis that grew out of European intellectual history. By reading Persian poetry and Islamic philosophical texts alongside those frameworks, she argues that students can reconsider concepts they think they already understand like love and desire. She wants Persian and other Islamic authors to be read not simply as data that illustrate theories developed elsewhere but “as theorists and intellectuals” in their own right who contribute ideas.
Both professors return to the importance of language study in making this work possible. In his closing comments, Shayani stated that “language is the vehicle through which we transport all of these ideas. It is the key to a culture and to a heritage.” He argued that a deep and immersive engagement with language is necessary in order to understand the literary, historical and cultural material he teaches. He described what Iranian studies and Persian classes at UCLA offer as “a gift and a key” that allow both heritage and non-heritage students to enter what he called “the beautiful, magical, vibrant atmosphere of the Persian world” and to learn more about themselves and their surroundings through that encounter.
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Featured Image Photographed by Sapna Drew/BruinLife