Welcoming New Lecturer Negar Mottahedeh
The Iranian Studies Program is delighted to welcome Dr. Negar Mottahedeh to Stanford for the fall of 2026.
A new endowment, made possible by a generous gift from the Taslimi Foundation, enables the Program to offer an annual course on the Baha'i Faith in Iran. Dr. Mottahedeh is the inaugural lecturer and will teach Iranian Visionary: On 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Modernism (GLOBAL 140) in the fall.
"As far as I know, there were only three occasions in which the president of Stanford University required the entire student body and faculty to attend a public lecture on campus: during Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit, for the visit of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and for a talk given by the Iranian-born modernist and visionary, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, in 1912. 'Abdu'l-Bahá spoke on that occasion about the threat of war and the impact of technology on contemporary culture. Those topics could be no more relevant today," wrote Dr. Mottahedeh. "It's with an eye to the much-overlooked impact of 'Abdu'l-Bahá’s thought on culture and the timeliness of his concerns, that I accepted the invitation to join the Iranian Studies Program for the inaugural lectureship in Baha'i studies at Stanford." Dr. Mottahedeh added, "As you can imagine, I am quite excited! I heard rumors that there were some truly brilliant students at Stanford!"
Negar Mottahedeh is a cultural critic and film theorist specializing in interdisciplinary contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies and Film Studies. She is known for her work on contemporary Iranian cinema and has, in addition, published on the history of reform and the role of technology and media in revolts and revolutions; on 'Abdu'l-Bahá’s vision of human solidarity and peace in the 20th Century; on Babism and Qajar history; and on Bahram Beyzaie and performance traditions in Iran.
She is currently Professor of Literature; Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies; Professor in Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies; and Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. Her publications include Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema (Duke University Press, 2008); Representing the Unpresentable: Historical Images of National Reform from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic of Iran (Syracuse University Press, 2008); ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's Journey West: The Course of Human Solidarity (Editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); #iranelection: Hashtag Solidarity and the Transformation of Online Life (Stanford University Press, 2015); and Whisper Tapes: Kate Millett in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019).