Karim, Persis

Persis Karim, Ph.D. is director emeritus of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University where she also taught in the Department of Humanities & Comparative and World Literature from 2017-2025. Prior to that, she taught in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where founded and directed the Persian Studies Program. She has, for the past 25 years, endeavored to help build and expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies on a local, national, and international level. She is the co-director and executive producer of the documentary film, “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life” and has edited/co-edited three anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers (2013); Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora (2006); and, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans (1999). She has guest edited and written numerous articles for academic journals including Iranian Studies, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is currently working on a family memoir about her parents and their experiences of living through war and occupation in their respective countries of Iran and France.