Shii News – Passing of Peter Chelkowski

Peter Chelkowski passed away on 21 October.

Here is an obituary prepared by his family that was circulated via ‘Adabiyat’.

Professor Emeritus Peter J. Chelkowski
The world has lost a giant. Dr. Peter Chelkowski, author, scholar and humanist, passed away
peacefully in Turin, Italy on October 21. He was 91.
In lecture halls, on theater stages and TV screens, Professor Chelkowski spent a lifetime
enchanting audiences with the beauty and depth of the Muslim world, his purpose – to
promote cross-cultural understanding and rectify Western misconceptions of Islam, as both
a religion and a multi-faceted culture.
Born and raised in World War II Poland a devout Catholic, he studied Oriental Philology at
the Jagiellonian University and acting in the theater school of Krakow. He escaped to
London to continue his education, as a student of Bernard Lewis, at the School of Oriental
Studies (SOAS). Subsequently, he moved to Iran, where in 1968 he received his P.h.D in
Persian literature from the University of Tehran. the first Pole to ever receive a doctorate in
Iranian Studies. He also worked for the charitable organization CARE Mission, for whom he
traveled over seventy thousand miles to numerous rural villages, building schools and
bathhouses. It was on these journeys that he became fascinated by Ta’zieh, the ritual
passion play of Shi’ite Muslims, which was to play a major role in defining his career, merging
his passion for performing arts and Muslim culture.
In 1968 he was hired as a cultural historian at New York University, where he would remain
and teach for the next 50 years. He was one of the founders of the The Hagop Kevorkian
Center for Near Eastern Studies where he served as both Chairman and Director for
numerous years and collaborated with many of his illustrious colleagues like Richard
Ettinghausen, Annemarie Schimmel, Hamid Dabashi and Ehsan Yarshater.
It was in the lecture halls that Prof. Chelkowski’s passion and vigor was most pronounced. He
would enrapture audiences, bringing humanity and clarity to subjects Americans had never
heard before. In recognition, he won the Golden Dozen Awards at NYU for best professor,
not once but twice.
Professor Chelkowski wrote and edited 12 books, hundreds of articles- from Encyclopedia
Iranica to The Drama Review. The subject matter of his work was always quite varied. In 1975
he wrote about Sufism in Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami
published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The book won the First Place Award by the
American Association of University Presses. In 1999 with Hamid Dabashi he co-wrote
Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Carlo McCormick
(Bookforum), “I urge people to get a hold of this book. . . it provides its readers with a higher
level of understanding than any hundred hours logged on CNN.com”
His lectures were not limited to the classroom, Prof. Chelkowski hosted 46 episodes of
Sunrise Semester on CBS. He was so popular that he graced the cover of The TV Guide. It
read, ““Peter Chelkowski Ph.D., I love you”. He was also the goto expert for the BBC, NBC,
CBS, Voice of America, NPR news networks for all things Middle Eastern. In the 1990’s, he
co-produced Hosay Trinidad, a documentary about Ta’zieh in the Caribbean for the
Smithsonian.
From the shores of the Caspian to the island of Trinidad, he brought Taz’yeh to the attention
of the International theater world, to the likes of Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, Peter
Brooks, Richard Shekner, and many others. This culminated in 2002 when Chelkowski in
collaboration with Mohammed Gaffari brought Ta’ziyeh to Lincoln Center to sold out
audiences.
In the end, Professor Chelkowski’s appreciation of Persian and Islamic culture was always
pure and apolitical. He felt comfortable crossing divides where many others felt reluctant.
He was a guest of the Shah at the 2,500 year celebration of the Persian empire in 1971. In
2002, he accepted an invitation from the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to
preside at Ta’ziyeh as the guest of honor in Kermanshah, Iran. In 2010, in conjunction with
UNESCO and ISESCO, he was awarded the Farabi International Award for “Iranian and
Islamic Studies” in Tehran.
He was also the recipient of multiple awards and fellowships from the Smithsonian Institute;
the Hoover Institute on War, Revolution, and Peace Fellowship; and the Social Science
Research Council. In 1997 he was awarded the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award for
Cross-Cultural Understanding and 2011 he was presented the Commander Cross of the
Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by the President of Poland. In 2023, the Jagiellonian
University honored him the Plus ratio quam vis commemorative Medal for outstanding
service in scholarship.
In 1975, Prof. Chelkowski described Nizami’s Khamseh, “sensuous, dramatic, gracious and
refined”. If you ever had the fortune of attending one of his lectures or dinner parties you
would probably use these same words to define him – Professor Emeritus Peter Chelkowski,
scholar, orator, educator and most importantly a humanist.
Born in 1933 in Lubliniec, Poland, Peter J. Chelkowski is survived by his wife Goga
Chelkowski, his daughter Monica Tarony, his son Peter Chelkowski and his grandchildren
Paolo Tarony, Sofia Tarony, Clyde Chelkowski and Earl Chelkowski.

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