Middle Eastern and North African Colloquium Series

Rethinking Modernity in Iran: Reza Shah's Vision and the Politics of Transformation

Bio: Professor Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a scholar of Iranian intellectual history. His work explores Persian modernity and the global development of democratic and socialist thought, ranging from influential biographies of modern Iranian figures to translations of key Western political and philosophical texts into Persian.

Abstract: Starting in the early twentieth century, two opposing paradigms shaped Iran's inevitable encounter with modernity, continuing to this day.