Michael Fischer, MIT: 

Discussant: Arang Keshavarzian, New York University.

Kevorkian Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Richard Ettinghausen Library, 50 Washington Square.

Lecture will start at 5p.m. and last until 7p.m.

Reza Baraheni, exiled novelist, poet, and critic and former Professor, University of Tehran: 

Discussant: Mehdi Khorrami, New York University.

Kevorkian Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Richard Ettinghausen Library, 50 Washington Square.

Lecture will start at 5p.m. and last until 7p.m.

 

Janet Afary USCB,

Some Western scholars of religion have suggested that we are witnessing a "deprivitization" of religion in a globalized world. However, in the case of Iran's Islamism, this explanation seems inadequate since practices that are presented as centuries old religious traditions are often newly invented ones that are constructed to serve particular ideological ends. This presentation will look at globalization and its impact on various Shi'I political discourses of Iran. Although Shiites constitute a minority of Muslims of the world, Shiite intellectuals have played a crucial rule in initiating modern interpretations of Islam and 

building major social movements around these ideas. Indeed we can speak of at least 5 such different Islamic discourses to which Shi'I intellectuals have contributed in the last century, have of which have included various forms of modernities.