Shii News – Academic Items
1. Book Launch: Language, People, and Society: Iranian Minority Languages and Literary Traditions | Aug 1 at OISE, U of T
Asemana Books, in proud collaboration with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, warmly invites you to the launch of a groundbreaking new volume:
🗓 Friday, August 1, 2025
🕑 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
📍 Room 11-164, OISE, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON
This powerful, multilingual volume features original contributions in Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, and includes a pioneering study on Iranian Sign Language—the first of its kind in an academic collection. Drawing on the proceedings of the 2023 McGill Symposium of Language Studies, the book brings together leading voices from across Canada, Europe, and the Middle East to explore urgent questions of language, identity, resistance, and representation.
Featured Speakers:
• Dr. Shahrzad Mojab (University of Toronto)
• Dr. Amir Kalan (McGill University)
• Dr. Mahdi Ganjavi (University of Toronto)
Books will be available on-site
Event Language: English | Multilingual roots celebrated
Free & open to the public
About the Volume
Language, People, and Society is edited by Amir Kalan, Mahdi Ganjavi, Anisa Jafari, and Lale Javanshir, and showcases critical work across languages and disciplines. With chapters by:
Amir Kalan · Shahrzad Mojab · Yalda Kaveh · Sima Hasan Dokht Firooz · Sara Siavoshi · Ardavan Guity · Jafer Sheikholislami · Anisa Jafari · Vahid Rashidi · Samad Pourmousavi · Hajar Kabiri · Saqi Ghahreman · Suzan Karimi · Elmira Bahmani
The collection examines the social lives of minority languages in Iran and among the diaspora—making essential contributions to linguistic justice, cultural memory, and transnational scholarship.
Available now worldwide, including Europe, North America, and Australia.
Order your copy: Purchase the Book
Learn more: Asemana Books Website
2. The Wonder of the World Book Talk on MELA Notes YouTube Channel
We’re delighted to announce that the recent MELA Notes Book Talk on:
The Wonder of the World: Travel Journals of Hajj Sayyah in the U.S. (1874–1875)
by Mirza Mohammad-Ali Mahallati (Hajj Sayyah)
Edited, Translated, and Introduced by Ali Ferdowsi (Notre Dame de Namur University)
In conversation with Mahdi Ganjavi (MELA Notes Review Editor) is now available for streaming on the MELA Notes Journal YouTube channel.
Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJfMxR_qgc0
3. Tajikistan Learning Tour – Sept 2025
Greetings from the Hikmat International Institute,
We’re excited to share that in addition to our premier online course on Islamic Mysticism this August, we are organizing a special Learning and Exploration Tour to Tajikistan in September 2025.
If you’d like to complement your summer with a journey that blends spiritual insight, academic engagement, and cultural discovery — this tour is for you. You’ll explore one of the region’s most beautiful and untouched countries through guided visits, scholarly discussions, and breathtaking natural landscapes.
This program offers a rare opportunity to explore Tajikistan’s historical, cultural, and natural wonders through an academic lens. It’s more than a tour — it’s a carefully curated experience combining scholarship, reflection, and discovery.
🗓️ Dates: September 6 – 13, 2025
📍 Locations: Dushanbe, Hissar Fortress, Sarazm (UNESCO site), Panjakent ruins, Lake Iskandarkul
🎓 Highlights: Guided tours, cultural immersion, scenic exploration, historical and natural sightseeing
⚠️ Very limited spaces are available, so we strongly encourage you to register soon to secure your place!
https://hikmat-ins.com/tajikistan-learning-tour/
4. Join us for the 7th PMA talk in 2025 by Dr Fuchsia Hart
THE ADES COLLECTION OF CERAMICS AND ITS PROVENANCE
In 1949, Gurgan Faiences by Iranian curator Mehdi Bahrami was published in Cairo. In the work, Bahrami presents a group of 12th/13th-century ceramics which, he argues, were made and recently excavated in Gurgan, in Iran’s northeast. Many of the objects published were owned by Clement and Raymond Ades in Cairo. The V&A now holds 40 examples of these ceramics from Iran once owned by members of the Ades family, with many more in other British collections. Further objects published by Bahrami were owned by Jacques Matossian, an art and antiquities dealer also based in Cairo. In this talk, Fuchsia Hart will focus on the little-known figure of Matossian and his wider role in the lives of the ‘Gurgan faiences’ and the formation of the Ades Collection. While Bahrami’s publication provided a starting point for this research, Fuchsia will draw on documentation still held in the V&A archives to explore the collection histories of the Ades objects. Using additional archival material, the objects will also be contextualised within the wider market for art from Iran in 20th-century Egypt. While many questions remain about the provenance of the Ades Collection and the larger proposed group of ‘Gurgan faiences’, this talk will begin to explore the story of their journey from Iran to England, via Egypt.
DR FUCHSIA HART
Fuchsia Hart is a historian of the arts of the Islamic world, specialising in the arts of Iran. She has been the Sarikhani Curator for the Iranian Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London since 2022. She is currently working on a number of projects, including a display of royal dress from Saudi Arabia and an article about British ceramics at the Qajar court. She holds a PhD in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford. Her PhD thesis explored the patronage of major shrines in Iran and Iraq by the second Qajar ruler of Iran, Fath ‘Ali Shah (r.1797-1834). In the past, she has held positions at the Bodleian Library (Oxford), the University of Warwick (UK), and Turquoise Mountain (Kabul).
24 July 2025, 5 – 6.30 pm UK Time
Online Lecture on Zoom
Zoom Registration Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/m_zhmCKzTWu8qL8bVae2CQ
Kind regards,
The PMA Team
Persian Manuscripts Association
https://persianmanuscripts.org/
5. Myth and History in Ancient Persia
The Achaemenids in the Iranian Tradition
R S Zarghamee
EUP, 2025
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-myth-and-history-in-ancient-persia.html
6. Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies
The Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies is a non-partisan academic body that is informed by a broad and robust approach to Islamic studies. Led by an internationally renowned team of specialists, it draws from the best traditions of scholarship in Islamic thought, taking in fields as diverse and interconnected as philosophy, mysticism, rational theology, science, logic, art, and literature.
Posted in: Academic items
- July 15, 2025
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