December 5th, 2018 – Dr. Abbas Jamshidi, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland, College Park, spoke at ACMCU on the representation of the “other” within Persian literature.
Dr. Abbas Jamshidi recently finished his doctoral degree in Comparative Literature at University of Maryland, College Park. In his dissertation, he mapped the trajectories of the representation of Arabs as the “other” in Persian and Parsi literary traditions. He has published on ethnocentric tendencies in modern Persian literary criticism. Most recently, he finished drafting an article on Shi’i Passion Plays and how historically they were used as an apparatus for representing the Sunnis as the “other” of the Shi’is in Iran. His book proposal titled Trauma of a Purloined Past: Arabs, “Otherness” and Colonial Modernity in Iran is under review to appear in a Routledge series on modern life in Iran. Abbas comes from diverse backgrounds: Sunnis mother and Shi’i father.
Through his career and publications, he strives to promote dialogue and solidarity among Arabs and Iranians, Shi’is and Sunnis. He works at Persian Flagship Program at University of Maryland, College Park.
