This graduate student is available to deliver lectures to your K-12 classroom at no charge. All requests MUST be booked through the Middle East Center Speaker's Bureau.
I am broadly interested in Iranian folk/regional music and its relation to the sense of identity. My current research focuses on music in Iranian port cities and littoral societies of the Persian Gulf. I would like to examine how the contradictory legacies of the port cities such as slavery and multiculturalism have formed the musical identity and imagination.
Before arriving at Penn, I worked on revivalist and purist trends in Iranian folk music from the 1960s to the 80s. This research examines the ways through which folk music was objectified for various political and social goals.
World Musics and Cultures