Kamran Rastegar
Research/Areas of Interest
Comparative literature, film studies, modern Arabic literature, modern Persian literature, memory studies, postcolonial studies
Education
- PhD, Columbia University, New York, United States, 2005
- MPhil, Columbia University, New York, United States, 2003
- MA, Columbia University, New York, United States, 2001
- BA, Hampshire College, Amherst Center, United States, 1992
Biography
I was trained a literary comparatist and have come to also be engaged in the field of cultural history. I have two broad areas of research interest:
First, I study Persian and Arabic literary history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My first book Literary Modernity between Europe and the Middle East (Routledge, 2009) explored the origins of the conception of literary modernity in Arabic and Persian literatures, a topic that I have further addressed in articles and as editor of a special issue of the journal Middle Eastern Literatures and in articles and chapters for edited volumes.
Second, I research the role of cinema and visual culture in the formation of cultural memory in conflict and post-conflict social settings, with specific interests in the histories of Iran, Lebanon, Palestine and Algeria. This research is reflected in my second book, Surviving Images: Cinema, War and Cultural Memory in the Middle East (Oxford UP, 2015). I am currently completing a critical study of the cinema of the Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman, under contract with Wallflower/Columbia University Press.
I was a founding member of Tufts' Department for Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora (and served as interim chair of the department in 2023-24), and directed the Tufts Arabic program (2009-2022). I also served as the director for the Center for the Humanities at Tufts for four years (2018-2022).
First, I study Persian and Arabic literary history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My first book Literary Modernity between Europe and the Middle East (Routledge, 2009) explored the origins of the conception of literary modernity in Arabic and Persian literatures, a topic that I have further addressed in articles and as editor of a special issue of the journal Middle Eastern Literatures and in articles and chapters for edited volumes.
Second, I research the role of cinema and visual culture in the formation of cultural memory in conflict and post-conflict social settings, with specific interests in the histories of Iran, Lebanon, Palestine and Algeria. This research is reflected in my second book, Surviving Images: Cinema, War and Cultural Memory in the Middle East (Oxford UP, 2015). I am currently completing a critical study of the cinema of the Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman, under contract with Wallflower/Columbia University Press.
I was a founding member of Tufts' Department for Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora (and served as interim chair of the department in 2023-24), and directed the Tufts Arabic program (2009-2022). I also served as the director for the Center for the Humanities at Tufts for four years (2018-2022).