FIU explores Middle Eastern cinema

The Middle East Studies Program in FIU’s School of International and Public Affairs will present  “What is Middle Eastern Cinema?” with Hamid Dabashi Friday, Feb. 5, at 2 p.m.

The lecture is free and open to the public and will be held in the Graham Center, Room 243, at FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus.

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kervorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He received a dual Ph.D. in sociology of culture and Islamic studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

A prolific author, Dabashi has written 16 books, edited four and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of more than 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer-reviewed journals on subjects including Iranian studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). His best-known books include Authority in Islam; Theology of Discontent; Truth and Narrative; Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future; Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran; Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema; Iran: A People Interrupted; and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema. His most recent work includes an introduction to the Random House Modern Library edition of The Adventures of Amir Hamza as well as Makhmalbaf at Large: The Making of a Rebel Filmmaker (I. B. Tauris, 2007) and Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire (Routledge, 2008).

For more information, please contact the Middle East Studies Program at 305-348-1792.