Authentic Texts as a Tool for Teaching Persian as a Foreign Language

About the Talk: This presentation is about using modern poems and short prose texts as teaching material for intermediate and advanced learners of Persian. Based on specific case studies, I am going to show how the expressive function of the language in poetic texts, associative and connotative meanings conveyed through allusions, metaphors, metonymies, and similes, can help the students learn about the rhetorical features of written Persian literary language and socio-historical aspects of modern Persian literature.

About the Speaker: Nima Mina teaches Persian language, classical and modern Persian literature, and contemporary Iranian culture at the University of Bonn. He previously held faculty positions at the University of Köln, the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and was a visiting faculty member at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Ohio State University in Columbus and University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He received his MA in General and Germanic linguistics, medieval German Studies, contemporary German literature, and Political Science from the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany, a DESS in music performance, and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the Université de Montréal. His research and publications are focused on the translation and cross-cultural reception of classical and modern Persian literature, the history of Orientalism in German-speaking countries, post-revolution Iranian diaspora studies, and multilingual authors of Iranian origin in Germanic, anglophone, and francophone literatures.