A discussion on the origin and influence of Persian humanism on Islamic civilization

Date: Thursday, November 29, 2012
Time: 6:30pm – 8:30pm (Followed by a book sale and signing.)
Venue: Asia Society (725 Park Avenue at 70th Street, NY)

What does it mean to be human? Humanism has mostly considered this question from a Western perspective. Columbia University professor and author Hamid Dabashi asks the questions anew, from a non-European point of view. His groundbreaking study The World of Persian Literary Humanism presents this rich tradition as the creative and subversive subconscious of Islamic civilization. In conversation with Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Robert I. Williams Term Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in his field. He has taught and delivered lectures in many North and Latin American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet is the Robert I. Williams Term Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has directed the Middle East Center since 2006.  She is the author of, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804-1946 (Princeton University Press, 1999) and Conceiving Citizens: Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran (Oxford University Press, 2011).

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