Aria Fani, "Reading Across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism" (U Texas Press, 2024)
The dynamic and interconnected ways Afghans and Iranians invented their modern selves through literature. Contrary to the presumption that literary nationalism in the Global South emerged through con...
31 Okt 202552min
Amir Moosavi, "Dust That Never Settles: Literary Afterlives of the Iran-Iraq War" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, the Iran-Iraq War was the longest conventional war fought between two states in the twentieth century. It marked a period that began just after a revolution...
14 Sep 202528min
Isabel Toral and Beatrice Gruendler, "An Unruly Classic: Kalīla and Dimna and Its Syriac, Arabic, and Early Persian Versions" (Brill, 2024)
The collection of wisdom fables known as Kalila and Dimna began its long literary life in Sanskrit more than two millennia ago, and was subsequently translated to numerous languages. But it is the Ara...
3 Aug 20251h 5min
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and export controls affect large numbers of companies ...
25 Jul 20251h 6min
What We Get Wrong About Iran, with Vali Nasr
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey talks with Vali Nasr, Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies and former dean at Johns Hopkins Uni...
16 Jul 202538min
Pamela Karimi, "Women, Art, Freedom: Artists and Street Politics in Iran" (Leuven UP, 2024)
Women, Art, Freedom: Artists and Street Politics in Iran offers an insightful look at the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in Iran, sparked by the tragic murder of Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of t...
4 Jul 20251h 1min
Vali Nasr, "Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Iran presents one of the most significant foreign policy challenges for America and the West, yet very little is known about what the country’s goals really are. Vali Nasr examines Iran’s political hi...
25 Jun 202550min
Gohar Homayounpour, "Persian Blues, Psychoanalysis and Mourning" (Routledge, 2022)
In this episode, Matthew Pieknik and Christopher Russell speak with Gohar Homayounpour about her book Persian Blues, Psychoanalysis and Mourning (Routledge, 2023) Psychoanalysis is, Homayounpour tells...
21 Apr 20251h 23min
