Reading, understanding and participating in contemporary registers of Persian as used in newspapers, radio/TV, as well as in online news and social media.
Course Details
Duration: 3 hours a week – offered in Winter semester every other year
Persian Language Course Placement and Sequence Policy
Students must take Persian language courses in the correct sequence, based on their actual proficiency. While some pairs (e.g., PERS 200/201 or 300/301) may be taken in either order, students may not register for a lower-level course after completing a higher-level one (e.g., completing PERS 201 and then taking PERS 104 or 101).
Placement is required for most courses to ensure appropriate class placement. The Department of Asian Studies may withdraw students if their placement is inaccurate.
Enrolling out of sequence affects learning and placement integrity. Please consult the Persian language program or a placement advisor to find your correct starting point.
Persian Language Course Placement and Sequence Policy
Students must take Persian language courses in the correct sequence, based on their actual proficiency. While some pairs (e.g., PERS 200/201 or 300/301) may be taken in either order, students may not register for a lower-level course after completing a higher-level one (e.g., completing PERS 201 and then taking PERS 104 or 101).
Placement is required for most courses to ensure appropriate class placement. The Department of Asian Studies may withdraw students if their placement is inaccurate.
Enrolling out of sequence affects learning and placement integrity. Please consult the Persian language program or a placement advisor to find your correct starting point.
Everyday exchanges, everyday most essential topics in students’ life, Understanding and describing how people live in different locations and climates throughout the Persianate world.
Course Details
Duration: 4 hours a week – Offered in fall semester every year
Persian Language Course Placement and Sequence Policy
Students must take Persian language courses in the correct sequence, based on their actual proficiency. While some pairs (e.g., PERS 200/201 or 300/301) may be taken in either order, students may not register for a lower-level course after completing a higher-level one (e.g., completing PERS 201 and then taking PERS 104 or 101).
Placement is required for most courses to ensure appropriate class placement. The Department of Asian Studies may withdraw students if their placement is inaccurate.
Enrolling out of sequence affects learning and placement integrity. Please consult the Persian language program or a placement advisor to find your correct starting point.
Persian Language Course Placement and Sequence Policy
Students must take Persian language courses in the correct sequence, based on their actual proficiency. While some pairs (e.g., PERS 200/201 or 300/301) may be taken in either order, students may not register for a lower-level course after completing a higher-level one (e.g., completing PERS 201 and then taking PERS 104 or 101).
Placement is required for most courses to ensure appropriate class placement. The Department of Asian Studies may withdraw students if their placement is inaccurate.
Enrolling out of sequence affects learning and placement integrity. Please consult the Persian language program or a placement advisor to find your correct starting point.
About Hasan: : Hasan Siddiqui is a historian of South Asia specializing in early-modern intellectual history. His research interests include the history of encyclopedias, the history of political thought, and the history of the book. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Chicago. He is an associate editor at the Journal of South Asian Intellectual History.
Areas of Specialty:
Early Modern South Asia
Research / Reading Group
I run a weekly reading group in premodern Persian texts. Some of our recent and anticipated readings include courtly chronicles, epistolary manuals, and the recorded discourses of Sufi shaykhs. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining.
Current Areas of Concentration
Intellectual history of the Mughal empire and Muslim South Asia.
About Mostafa: : Dr. Mostafa Abedinifard is an Assistant Professor of Modern Persian Literature and Culture in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and serves on the editorial boards of several scholarly publications. More information on Dr. Abedinifard’s research projects and publications can be accessed through his website
Areas of Specialty:
Modern Persian literature and culture; Iranian cinema; comparative literary and cultural studies; gender and sexuality studies; humour studies
Research
Research Interests in Iranian and Persianate Studies
diaspora literatures and cultures
fiction, nonfiction, folk and popular culture
(global South) literary theory; literary histories; history of ideas & emotions
gender & sexuality; men and masculinities; critical diversity studies
comparative literary and cultural studies; literature as world literature
About Alexandra: I am a scholar of Classical Persian Literature interested in gender & sexuality, embodiment, the history of emotions, and race/ethnicity in premodern Persianate literature and Perso-Islamicate culture. My current book project, Men in War, Men in Love: Masculinities in Premodern Persianate Poetry, 1000-1700 CE, examines the construction of masculinities in long narrative poems (masnavis). Among the poems I study are Ferdowsi’s famous Shāhnāmeh (1010 CE), as well as two epics in conversation with it – such as the Kushnāmeh (1118 CE), which features a monster as its main character, and the ʿAlināmeh (1089 CE), which replaces lineage with spiritual kinship. In my work, I also put forth a way of understanding the masculinities of lovers through the figure of Majnun in Neẓāmi’s Layli o Majnun (1188 CE), who constructs his masculinity with the vocabulary of fighting and enduring suffering. I also discuss same-sex eroticism in the Sufi romance Maḥmud o Ayāz (1614 CE).
Research
A main concern of my research is to engage with current scholarship in premodern Global Studies in order to incorporate Persianate Literature into Medievalist scholarship for a more diverse and less Eurocentric view of the Global Middle Ages. I have addressed these concerns in two publications on the Sendbādnāmeh, a twelfth century Persian collection of tales known in Medieval Europe as the Seven Sages (of Rome).
Current Areas of Concentration
Gender and Sexuality in premodern Persianate literature, especially masculinities, in epics and romances
Contemporary Iranian Cinema for Advanced Speakers of Persian
[PERS_V 410]
Course Overview
PERS 410 is a content-based course designed for advanced speakers of Persian, offering a unique opportunity to explore Iranian cinema through the Persian language. The course uses films as a rich and engaging medium to examine a range of socio-political and cultural issues that have shaped contemporary Iranian society.
Course Details
Duration: 3 hours a week – offered in Winter semester every year
Persian Language Course Placement and Sequence Policy
Students must take Persian language courses in the correct sequence, based on their actual proficiency. While some pairs (e.g., PERS 200/201 or 300/301) may be taken in either order, students may not register for a lower-level course after completing a higher-level one (e.g., completing PERS 201 and then taking PERS 104 or 101).
Placement is required for most courses to ensure appropriate class placement. The Department of Asian Studies may withdraw students if their placement is inaccurate.
Enrolling out of sequence affects learning and placement integrity. Please consult the Persian language program or a placement advisor to find your correct starting point.
This course builds upon PERS 300 and aims to advance students’ Interpersonal, Interpretive, and Presentational skills to the Advanced High/Superior proficiency level. By the end of the course, students will be able to read and write short essays in Persian, effectively describing places and people, narrating events across major time frames, and expressing and justifying their opinions on abstract topics.
Course Details
Duration: 4 hours a week – offered in fall semester every year
Persianate Studies: Iranian handicrafts (Detailed Description of objects and arts, processes of making handicrafts)
Pertinent Socio-cultural and political issues and current events in Iranian News, Media, films and literature (forming, expressing and defending one’s opinion)
Pertinent Socio-cultural and political issues and current events in Iranian films and literature (forming, expressing and defending one’s opinion about a story or a movie)
Persian Language Course Placement and Sequence Policy
Students must take Persian language courses in the correct sequence, based on their actual proficiency. While some pairs (e.g., PERS 200/201 or 300/301) may be taken in either order, students may not register for a lower-level course after completing a higher-level one (e.g., completing PERS 201 and then taking PERS 104 or 101).
Placement is required for most courses to ensure appropriate class placement. The Department of Asian Studies may withdraw students if their placement is inaccurate.
Enrolling out of sequence affects learning and placement integrity. Please consult the Persian language program or a placement advisor to find your correct starting point.
This course is a continuation of PERS 200 and aims to further develop students’ Interpersonal, Interpretive, and Presentational skills to the Intermediate High/Advanced Low proficiency level. By the end of the course, students will be able to read and write extended paragraphs in Persian to describe places and people, as well as narrate events across major time frames.
Most essential everyday exchanges, knowing and describing people’s characters and appearances, travelling essentials, suggestions for tourists, Persian handcrafts (1)
Course Details
Duration: 4 hours a week – offered in winter semester every year
Persian Language Course Placement and Sequence Policy
Students must take Persian language courses in the correct sequence, based on their actual proficiency. While some pairs (e.g., PERS 200/201 or 300/301) may be taken in either order, students may not register for a lower-level course after completing a higher-level one (e.g., completing PERS 201 and then taking PERS 104 or 101).
Placement is required for most courses to ensure appropriate class placement. The Department of Asian Studies may withdraw students if their placement is inaccurate.
Enrolling out of sequence affects learning and placement integrity. Please consult the Persian language program or a placement advisor to find your correct starting point.
