This is the first in the York-Noor Lecture Series 2012-2013:

Ali Shari’ati and the Dilemma of Modernity in Iran
by Professor Farzin Vahdat

Ali Shari’ati was one of the major architects of the Islamic Revolution in Iran whose discourse has had a lasting impact upon the consciousness of large groups of Iranians. He drew on Islamic, Shi’i, Sufi, and modern European thought to address some of the most significant social and political problems of Iran in its encounter with the forces of the modern world. The idea of human agency as the foundation of the modern world is very much present in Shari’ati’s teachings – however he does not consider this agency to be direct but rather derived from Divine Agency, and he mostly attributes it to the collective rather than the individual. In this talk, Farzin Vahdat analyzes Shari’ati’s discourse with respect to some of the dilemmas of modernity.

Farzin Vahdat, PhD, is is the chief research officer of the Nonviolent Initiative for Democracy (NID). He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis University and is an authority in the analysis of the concepts and conditions of modernity and their application to Iran, Islam and the Muslim world. Professor Vahdat is the author of God and Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (Syracuse University Press, 2002), of the forthcoming Islamic Ethos and the Specter of Modernity, and of numerous articles in English and Persian, a number of which have been translated into various languages. Dr. Vahdat has taught at Tufts, Harvard and Yale Universities and Vassar College and is currently conducting research at Vassar.

Date: Wednesday November 28
Time: 6:00 pm
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: Free

Please see the remaining titles in the York-Noor Lecture Series 2012-2013.

For previous York-Noor lectures, please click here.