Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet is a prominent scholar of Iranian and Middle Eastern history. Her research addresses issues of national and cultural formation and gender concerns in Iran, as well as historical relations between the U.S., Iran, and the Islamic world. She is the author of highly influential works including Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804-1946, which analyzed land and border disputes between Iran and its neighboring countries. These debates were pivotal to national development and cultural production and have significantly informed the territorial disputes in the region today. Conceiving Citizens: Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran, a wide-ranging study of the politics of health, reproduction and maternalism in Iran from the mid-19th century to the modern-day Islamic Republic, received the Book Prize from the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies for outstanding scholarship in Middle East gender relations.

Kashani-Sabet is the recipient of an Institute for Advanced Study fellowship. For over a decade she has directed Penn’s Middle East Center as a Title VI National Resource Center and launched the modern Middle East studies major and minor undergraduate degree program. She has also served on the Faculty Senate and the Penn Arts & Sciences Dean’s Council on Diversity.