The American Institute of Iranian Studies (AIIrS) is a non-profit consortium of US universities and museums, founded in 1967, for the purpose of promoting the interdisciplinary study of Iranian civilization and knowledge of Iran and the Persian-speaking world from the earliest periods to the present. Its purview comprises the historical Iranian world of Central Asia, the Middle East and South Asia as well as the modern political state of Iran. AIIrS facilitates academic and cultural exchange in the broad field of humanities between the US and Iran and is dedicated to supporting scholars and funding research in Iranian Studies. It represents American institutions of higher education and research in Iranian Studies and furthers the field in the US curriculum.
Contents |
From 1967-1979, AIIrS operated an overseas center in Tehran for the purpose of supporting and hosting visiting American scholars. The center was obliged to suspend its activities after the rupture of diplomatic relations between the US and Iran, and for the next two decades, AIIrS devoted itself to furthering Iranian Studies in the US by offering grants to students, holding conferences and fostering a sense of community in the field. Following the Dialogue of Civilizations initiative in 1998, AIIrS resumed sending scholars to Iran and instituted grants for Iranian scholars to research in the US.
The core program of AIIrS is short-term grant-making for individual scholars. In addition to the individual awards, AIIrS runs a summer Persian language training program in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, for graduate students who are US citizens. Beyond the fellowship programs, AIIrS also supports conferences on Iranian Studies in the US and abroad, and provides occasional funding for projects including publications and exhibitions. It also awards the Roth Prize, funded by the Lois Roth Endowment, in recognition of demonstrated excellence in translating Persian literature into English.
The Institute’s grants and programs aim to create and maintain expertise on an important geographical region, as an aspect of the long-term needs of higher education in international and foreign language studies. The larger objectives of AIIrS are to represent American institutions of higher education and research in the field of Iranian Studies, and to promote the study of Iran as a significant component of global history, thereby exposing new generations of students and scholars to the Persianate world.
Kamran Aghaie
Abbas Amanat
Joan Aruz
Guitty Azarpay
Sussan Babaie
Kathryn Babayan
Shiva Balaghi
William Beeman
Michael E. Bonine
Mehrzad Boroujerdi
Houchang E. Chehabi
Touraj Daryaee
Dick Davis
Robert H. Dyson
Carl W. Ernst
Hadi Salehi Esfahani
Massumeh Farhad
Mark B. Garrison
Gene R. Garthwaite
Ellis Goldberg
William Hanaway
Prudence Harper
Ibrahim Karawan
Persis Karim
Fatemeh Keshavarz
Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami
Linda Komaroff
Mirjam Kuenkler
Charles Kurzman
Judith Lerner
Franklin Lewis
Paul Losensky
Beatrice Manz
Roy Mottahedeh
David Owen
Holly Pittman
Jasmin Rostam-Kolayi
Brian Spooner
Devin J. Stewart
Matthew W. Stolper
David B. Stronach
Ehsan Yarshater
Hossein Ziai
Official Website: http://www.simorgh-aiis.org
Facebook Page: American Institute of Iranian Studies
Council of American Overseas Research Centers: http://www.caorc.org