Sheikholeslami-Batmanghelidj Events

Iranian Studies Visiting Scholar Dr. Shahla Haeri ● April 2023

The Persian Studies Program welcomed Dr. Shahla Haeri as 2023’s Sheikholeslami-Batmanghelidj Iranian Studies Visiting Scholar. Dr. Shahla Haeri is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University and the former director of the Women’s Studies Program at Boston University. She is one of the pioneers of Iranian Anthropology and has produced cutting-edge ethnographies of Iran, Pakistan, and the broader Muslim world.

Dr. Haeri’s research focuses on questions of gender and religion in the region. Her landmark books include Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage, Mut’a, in Iran (1989), which elucidates the tenacious but secretive custom of temporary marriage in Iran, and No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women (2002), which widens the ethnographic scope to make visible lives of educated and professional Muslim women. Her most recent book, The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority, Gender is a groundbreaking work on the extraordinary lives and legacies of Muslim women sovereigns from across cultures and Islamic history.

Watch the event recording for Dr. Haeri’s lecture, Perilous Adventures: Women and Civil Society Participation in Iran, from April 21, 2023.

This week of events was sponsored by the Sheikholeslami-Batmanghelidj Fund.

Georgetown students in the Persian Studies Program had the opportunity to attend three seminars by the inaugural Sheikholeslami-Batmanghelidj Iranian Studies Visiting Scholar Dr. Abbas Milani during the week of March 21st, 2022. Dr. Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies and Adjunct Professor at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. In his seminar series entitled Modernism and Modernities, Dr. Milani shared with students his expertise on the contemporary history of Iran. In total, around 60 undergraduate and graduate students from Georgetown College and the School of Foreign Service attended these seminars. This week of events was funded by the Sheikholeslami-Batmanghelidj Fund.