The American Institute of Iranian Studies (AIIrS) is a non-profit

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 consortium

Consortium

A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....

 of US

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 universities

University

A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...

 and museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

s, founded in 1967, for the purpose of promoting the interdisciplinary study of Iranian civilization and knowledge of Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 and the Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

-speaking world from the earliest periods to the present. Its purview comprises the historical Iranian world of Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

, the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 and South Asia

South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...

 as well as the modern political state of Iran. AIIrS facilitates academic and cultural exchange in the broad field of humanities

Humanities

The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

 between the US and Iran and is dedicated to supporting scholars and funding research in Iranian Studies

Iranian Studies

Iranian studies , is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the study of history, literature, art and culture of the Iranian people. It is a part of the wider field of Oriental studies....

. It represents American institutions of higher education

Higher education

Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...

 and research

Research

Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

 in Iranian Studies and furthers the field in the US curriculum

Curriculum

See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...

.

History

From 1967-1979, AIIrS operated an overseas center in Tehran

Tehran

Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

 for the purpose of supporting and hosting visiting American scholars. The center was obliged to suspend its activities after the rupture of diplomatic relations between the US and Iran, and for the next two decades, AIIrS devoted itself to furthering Iranian Studies in the US by offering grants to students, holding conferences and fostering a sense of community in the field. Following the Dialogue of Civilizations initiative in 1998, AIIrS resumed sending scholars to Iran and instituted grants for Iranian scholars to research in the US.

Programs

The core program of AIIrS is short-term grant-making for individual scholars. In addition to the individual awards, AIIrS runs a summer Persian language training program in Dushanbe

Dushanbe

-Economy:Coal, lead, and arsenic are mined nearby in the cities of Nurek and Kulob allowing for the industrialization of Dushanbe. The Nurek Dam, the world's highest as of 2008, generates 95% of Tajikistan's electricity, and another dam, the Roghun Dam, is planned on the Vakhsh River...

, Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....

, for graduate students who are US citizens. Beyond the fellowship programs, AIIrS also supports conferences on Iranian Studies in the US and abroad, and provides occasional funding for projects including publications and exhibitions. It also awards the Roth Prize, funded by the Lois Roth Endowment, in recognition of demonstrated excellence in translating Persian literature

Persian literature

Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...

 into English.

The Institute’s grants and programs aim to create and maintain expertise on an important geographical region, as an aspect of the long-term needs of higher education in international and foreign language

Foreign language

A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her...

 studies. The larger objectives of AIIrS are to represent American institutions of higher education and research in the field of Iranian Studies, and to promote the study of Iran as a significant component of global history, thereby exposing new generations of students and scholars to the Persianate world.

Trustees and Advisors

Kamran Aghaie

Abbas Amanat

Joan Aruz

Guitty Azarpay

Sussan Babaie

Kathryn Babayan

Shiva Balaghi

William Beeman

William Beeman

William Orman Beeman is an actor, author, singer, "Middle East expert," and professor of anthropology at The University of Minnesota, where he is Chair of the Department of Anthropology. For many years he was Professor of Anthropology; Theatre, Speech and Dance; and East Asian Studies at Brown...

Michael E. Bonine

Mehrzad Boroujerdi

Houchang E. Chehabi

Touraj Daryaee

Touraj Daryaee

Touraj Daryaee is a contemporary Persian Iranologist and historian.His elementary and secondary schooling was in Tehran, Iran and Athens, Greece. Daryaee took his Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999...

Dick Davis

Robert H. Dyson

Carl W. Ernst

Hadi Salehi Esfahani

Massumeh Farhad

Mark B. Garrison

Gene R. Garthwaite

Ellis Goldberg

William Hanaway

Prudence Harper

Ibrahim Karawan

Persis Karim

Fatemeh Keshavarz

Fatemeh Keshavarz

Fatemeh Keshavarz is an Iranian academic, writer and literary figure. She is a professor of Persian Language and Comparative Literature and chair of the department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis.Fatemeh Keshavarz holds a B.A...

Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami

Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami

Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami is a literary critic, writer and Iranologist.He studied Persian and French literatures in the University of Texas at Austin and he received his PhD in 1996. Currently he teaches Persian language and literature at New York University. His research is focused on the literary...

Linda Komaroff

Mirjam Kuenkler

Charles Kurzman

Charles Kurzman

Charles Kurzman is a Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in Middle East and Islamic studies. Among his publications are:* * * * * -External links:*...

Judith Lerner

Franklin Lewis

Franklin Lewis

Franklin D. Lewis is an Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is also the incoming Deputy Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago...

Paul Losensky

Beatrice Manz

Roy Mottahedeh

Roy Mottahedeh

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh is a professor of pre-modern social and intellectual history of the Islamic Middle East at Harvard University and expert on Iranian culture.-Life:...

David Owen

David Owen

David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen CH PC FRCP is a British politician.Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post; he co-authored the failed Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans offered during the Bosnian War...

Holly Pittman

Jasmin Rostam-Kolayi

Brian Spooner

Devin J. Stewart

Matthew W. Stolper

David B. Stronach

Ehsan Yarshater

Ehsan Yarshater

Ehsan Yarshater is the founder and director of The Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. He was the first full-time professor of Persian at a U.S. university since World War II....

Hossein Ziai

Hossein Ziai

Dr. Hossein Ziai , Tenured Full Professor of Islamic and Iranian Studies, and Director of Iranian Studies at UCLA, where he has taught since 1988. He received his B.S. in 1967 in Mathematics & Physics from Yale University, and his Ph.D. in Islamic Philosophy from Harvard University in 1976...

External links

Official Website: http://www.simorgh-aiis.org

Facebook Page: American Institute of Iranian Studies

Council of American Overseas Research Centers: http://www.caorc.org