Hamid Dabashi

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of a number of highly acclaimed books and articles on Iran, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (transaesthetics). Among his best-known books are his Authority in Islam, Theology of Discontent, Truth and Narrative, Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema. His forthcoming book Iran: A People Interrupted is scheduled for publication in 2006 by the New Press. An award-winning author and frequent lecturer around the globe, Professor Dabashi is an intellectual historian and a literary/cultural critic with a wide range of interest in global geopolitics. He lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi. Professor Dabashi is a founding member of the Executive Committee of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society. He has been the Chair of the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC), the Associate Director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society (CCLS), the Director of Graduate Studies at MEALAC and CCLS, and the Chair of the Core Curriculum Committee of Columbia College. He has also been the Executive Secretary for the Society of Iranian Studies. Professor Dabashi was educated in his native Iran and then in the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He has taught and delivered lectures in many American, European, Arab and Iranian universities.