Iranian Studies Book Launch: Isfahan

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies
and the Canadian Society for Iranian and Persian Studies
jointly present:

Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran

by Dr. Farshid Emami (Rice University)

Friday, December 6, 2024 3 pm Eastern Time (Canada & US)

Location for In-Person Attendance:

Rm 200B, 4 Bancroft Ave, Toronto, ON, M5S 1C1

Zoom Registration Link for Virtual Attendance:

https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYuc-CprD0oHd30-XBt8mUEtmWhaTrKGOrJ

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Abstract:

A vibrant urban settlement from medieval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, this book reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city.

Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city’s markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to life the social landscapes that animated the lives of urban dwellers and shaped their perceptions of themselves and the world. In doing so, Emami reveals seventeenth-century Isfahan as more than a cluster of beautiful monuments and gardens. It was a cosmopolitan city, where senses and materials, nature and artifice, and ritual and sociability acted in unison, engendering urban experiences that became paramount across the globe during the early modern period.

Drawing extensively on Persian literary and visual sources, including the “Guide for Strolling in Isfahan,” this book casts new light on the history of a major Eurasian city and opens up new possibilities for cross-cultural studies of urban experience in the early modern period.

Bio:

Farshid Emami specializes in the history of architecture, urbanism, and the arts in the Islamic lands, with a focus on the early modern period and particularly Safavid Iran. His scholarly interests include global histories of early modernity, interactions of architecture and literature, social histories of the arts, and artistic exchange in the Persianate lands and beyond. Emami’s studies of early modern Isfahan have been published in the Metropolitan Museum Journal (2019), Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (2018), and Muqarnas (2016). He has also written on topics such as lithography in nineteenth-century Iran and modernist architecture and urbanism in the Middle East.

Trained as an architect and urban designer, Farshid Emami earned a master’s degree in Architecture Studies from MIT in 2011. He completed his Ph.D. in History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in 2017. Prior to joining Rice in 2020, he taught at Oberlin College for 2.5 years and was an Andrew M. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.