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Persianate World

Iran

Persianate Futurism: First Time on the Overnight Train from Tehran to Samarqand

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Alex Shams

Originally published on Ajam Media Collective on May 28, 2023. This post is part of the Persianate Futurism series, a collection of works which asks: What will the Persianate world

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India Iran

When Persian was an Indian Language: The Fables of Jameh ul-Tamseel from Medieval Hyderabad to Modern Iran

Posted on June 29, 2022 by Alex Shams

Originally published on Maidaanam on June 29, 2022. Every book has a story. While we often ignore the physical object to focus on what’s written on its pages, a book

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About me

Alex Shams is an Iranian-American writer and a PhD student of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

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Recent posts

  • Workshop: Investigating Power
  • The “Terrorists” in My Grandmother’s Neighborhood
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  • ‘They Hit Everyone and Anyone’: From Lebanon, residents share what life has been like since Israel launched its attack.
  • Iran Braces for Uncertainty After President Raisi’s Death
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About

Born and raised in an Iranian-American family in Los Angeles, Alex Shams has long been fascinated by the stories that places can tell us. Growing up, he learned Persian and Spanish; in college, he learned Arabic and studied abroad at the American University of Cairo before moving to Beirut after graduation. After receiving his master’s in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard, he moved to Bethlehem, Palestine, where he was a journalist at Ma’an News Agency, the largest independent Palestinian news organization. He received his PhD. from the University of Chicago in Sociocultural Anthropology. His dissertation, entitled “Constructing Islamic Modernity: Power, Religion, and Masculinity in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” was based on three years of ethnographic research in Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan as well as archival research in the British Library and Ba’ath Party Archives.

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