We will engage Prof. Mana Kia in conversation about Persianate Selves, her first book. Persianate Selves poses a simple question: what did it mean to be Persian before nationalism?

In order to address this question, Kia patiently and methodically reads a variety of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Persian-language texts—histories, travelogues, biographical dictionaries— composed and circulated in a cultural geography that included and far surpassed modern-day Iran. This study interrogates concepts that today we have learned to take for granted: lineage, place, homeland, and origin. To what extent has Persianate Selves reset our conceptual framings of this crucial historical period? What paths does it envision for the future of Iranian Studies as a field?

Please join us!