Interview with Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz; Part One: Iranology in America; October 18, 2017 - October 18, 2017 Conversation and interview

Machine summary:

Your words, as the director of the "Roshen Institute for Iranian Studies" at the University of Maryland and a professor of Persian language and literature at this university, are worth hearing for many audiences, especially young people who may be less informed about the history of this field of study. Therefore, I would like to request permission to reach the current status of Iranian studies in America by providing a very general overview of the history of this field. For example, after World War II, Americans' interest in studying Iran increased, causing a surge in this field, or conversely, with the occurrence of the Islamic Revolution, a rupture appeared in Iranian studies research, and a decline became apparent in this area. The Iranian government also constantly introduced us as the children of that two thousand five hundred year old culture and the children of Cyrus the Great, which of course is important, but to what extent was twentieth century Iran close to this image? Of course, it must be said that sometimes these donations are given to the university with personal motives; for example, the donor wants to leave a name for themselves and their family, or immigrants who have been separated from their roots and are in search of individual identity see this as a way to gain identity. And the only benefit of this is not just that a group of people knows Iran well; those who enter the field of Iranian Studies should, like anyone else, have work available for them in the future, which unfortunately is not the case.