Iranian Studies Seminar
February 7, 2008
5:30 pm at Faculty House, Columbia University

“American Crosses, Persian Crescents: Religion and the Diplomacy of US-Iranian Relations, 1834-1979”

Speaker: Professor Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet

Synopsis:

The American public came to know Iran through its missionaries who had lived among the Persians. For their part, Iranians grew familiar with Americans through interactions with these missionary pioneers as well. While American Presbyterians quickly established and expanded their institutional presence in the country, it became abundantly clear to them that Muslim converts to Protestantism remained few and far between. Missionary perceptions of Iranian Muslims, however, left an indelible imprint on American public understanding of Iran and its people.

At the same time that Presbyterian missionaries opened up Iran to proselytizing, American academics showed curiosity about Iranian antiquity. Over time, scholars specialized in the languages, archeology, and religion of the ancient Persian empires.

In 1856, Iran formalized relations with the United States in a treaty of friendship and commerce signed at Constantinople. It would take nearly a century for American commercial interest in Iran to assume primacy in US-Iranian diplomacy.

Thus, contact occurred on three separate levels: missionary activity; academe; and diplomacy. Historians who have chronicled the contact between Iran and America narrate a familiar outline of events: the establishment of embassies; World War II and the Allied occupation of Iran; the Musaddiq affair; and the hostage crisis. This study goes through a similar timeline but with an eye toward the significance of religious identities.

Professor Kashani-Sabet argued that religious ideology frequently colored perceptions and influenced policy-making. Even after more than a hundred years of interaction, cultural representations were refracted through religious difference and similarity. Despite the increasingly secular cultures of Iran and America in the early 20th century, religion remained a salient ideology for the public in both societies – one that has had a profound impact on the nature of US-Iranian relations.

Speaker’s Bio:

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead Scholar. She completed her M.A., M.Phil., & Ph.D. in history at Yale University. Her book, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804-1946 (Princeton University Press, 1999) discusses Iranian nationalism and analyzes the significance of land and border disputes, with attention to Iran's shared boundaries with the Ottoman Empire (later Iraq and Turkey), Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf region. Her book is being translated into Persian by Kitabsara Press, Tehran, Iran.

Professor Kashani-Sabet teaches courses on various aspects of modern Middle Eastern history, including ethnic and political conflicts, gender and women's issues, popular culture, diplomatic history, revolutionary ideologies, and general surveys. She is finishing a book on the history of women in modern Iran as well as a book on America's historical relationship with Iran and the Islamic world.