Society of Scholars
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The Society of Scholars is an intellectual community of humanists of diverse generations, academic ranks, and departmental affiliations who contribute to and learn from one another’s work. Each year, approximately eight faculty and three dissertation research fellowships support members of the Society of Scholars. Scholars in year-long residence at the University of Washington may be invited to participate as well. The group meets biweekly throughout the year to discuss their research in progress.
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2024 - 2025 Society of Scholars
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2023 - 2024 Society of Scholars Fellow
Aria Fani (he/him/his)
Persophone Literary Culture After the Nation State
If the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries established the high-water mark of Persianate transregionalism, then the following two centuries were defined not so much by the undoing of this world in toto, but by its redeployment and regeneration in new cultural guises and (trans)national contexts. This study explores the resonances of the Persianate world to assess how a cosmopolitan ecumene appeared in new guises in the modern era and examines in contemporary times the entangled literary-cultural relationships between Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan to ascertain the validity and possibilities of employing a Persianate/Persophone paradigm.