Shabani-Jadidi, Pouneh

Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi is Instructional Professor of Persian at the University of Chicago at the Department of Near Easter Languages and Civilizations. She teaches Persian language and culture as well as media Persian. Before joining the University of Chicago, she taught Persian language and linguistics as well as Persian literature and translation at McGill University (2006-2021), the University of Oxford (2014-2015), the University of Chicago (summer 2008), and Tehran Azad University (1997-2004). Her research focuses on teaching and learning Persian as a second language, as well as Persian literary translation. She is interested in applying the theoretical concepts of linguistics and applied linguistics in the teaching of foreign languages to facilitate the acquisition of language for second language learners. Dr. Shabani-Jadidi has published four textbooks for Persian learners, namely The Routledge Introductory Persian Course (coauthor, Routledge, 1st edition 2010 and 2nd edition 2020) and The Routledge Intermediate Persian Course (coauthor, Routledge, 1st edition 2012 and 2nd edition Forthcoming), The Routledge Advanced Persian Course (author, Routledge, 2020), and What the Persian Media Says (author, Routledge, 2015). In order to make available the research conducted in the field of teaching and learning Persian as a second language to scholars and students, she edited a volume, titled The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian (2020), which encompasses theoretical and practical concepts of Persian language teaching and learning. Hence, it is useful both to instructors and to students of the language. She has also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics (2018), to which she has contributed two chapters, one on the history of teaching Persian as a second language, and the other on Persian psycholinguistics.

Dr. Shabani-Jadidi has a passion for languages and how they work. Being a multilingual herself, she finds it intriguing to compare and contrast the structure and the lexicon of two or more languages. To that end, she has published a book on how Persian speakers process compound verbs in Persian, namely Processing Compound Verbs in Persian: A Psycholinguistic Approach to Complex Predicates (Leiden and University of Chicago Press, 2014), and a book on the practice of translation, namely Translation Metacognitive Strategies (VDM Verlag, 2009), and she has co-edited a volume on translating Persian literature into English, entitled The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation (2022). In the practice of translation, she has done some translation for several legal offices and the court in Canada, and she has co-translated four books to date, including a historical book called The Thousand Families: Commentary on Leading Political Figures of Nineteenth Century Iran by Ali Shabani (with Patricia Higgins, Peter Lang, 2018), two novels, namely Hafez in Love: A Novel (Hafez-e Nashenide-Pand) by Iraj Pezeshkzad (with Patricia Higgins, Syracuse University Press, 2021) and Island of Bewilderment: A Novel of Modern Iran (Jazire-ye Sargardani) by Simin Daneshvar (with Patricia Higgins, Syracuse University Press, 2022), and finally a poetry collection, entitled The Eight Books: A Complete English Translation (Hasht Ketab) by Sohrab Sepehri (with Prashant Keshavmurthy, Brill, 2021).

Her upcoming books are the co-edited volume “The Arts of Teaching Persian Literature” (under contract with Brill, and to appear in 2023), “The Handbook of Persian Dialects and Dialectology” (Springer, 2023), “The Handbook of Persian Literary Devices” (Springer, 2023), as well as a translation of The Wandering Cameleer: A Novel of Modern Iran (Sareban Sargardan) by Simin Daneshvar.

Other than teaching and research, she serves as reviewer for various academic journals, including International Journal of Iranian Studies, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Sage Open Journal, Frontiers in Psychology, International Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, and LINGUA. In addition, she served as President of the American Association of Teachers of Persian from 2018 to 2020.