Rahim Shayegan
M. Rahim Shayegan is professor of Iranian and the Ancient Near East, the Jahangir and Eleanor Amuzegar Chair of Iranian Studies, and the founding Director of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World. He received his PhD from Harvard University, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, before joining the NELC faculty at UCLA.
His research and teaching range widely across subjects, periods, and linguistic boundaries. The major tenets of his scholarly pursuit relate to the languages, literary traditions, and history of Iran and Mesopotamia from antiquity to the early medieval period. His research pays special heed to the dialectics at play in cultural and intellectual exchanges between ancient Iran, Mesopotamia, and the Greco-Roman world on the one side, and Central Asia, India, and China on the other side. His interest in establishing connections between neighboring regions reflects his interest in the linguistically heterogeneous empires of (late) antiquity, whose political, ideological, and religious structures are the results of complex processes of cultural borrowings and acculturation.
He has authored and co-edited several books, among them Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia (Cambridge UP, 2011); Aspects of History and Epic in Ancient Iran (Center for Hellenic Studies—Harvard UP, 2012); The Talmud in Its Iranian Context (co-editor, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010); Persia beyond the Oxus (guest editor, Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 2012); and Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore. Washington, D.C./Cambridge, Mass.: Ilex Foundation/ Center for Hellenic Studies – Harvard University Press, 2019. He is currently preparing a new history of the Sasanian empire and an edition and translation of the Sasanian royal and private inscriptions (third and fourth century CE), under contract with Cambridge University Press.
He has been the recipient of several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013–14.
Address: University of California, Los Angeles
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
415 Portola Plaza
386 Humanities Building
Mail code 151105
Los Angeles, California 90095–1511
His research and teaching range widely across subjects, periods, and linguistic boundaries. The major tenets of his scholarly pursuit relate to the languages, literary traditions, and history of Iran and Mesopotamia from antiquity to the early medieval period. His research pays special heed to the dialectics at play in cultural and intellectual exchanges between ancient Iran, Mesopotamia, and the Greco-Roman world on the one side, and Central Asia, India, and China on the other side. His interest in establishing connections between neighboring regions reflects his interest in the linguistically heterogeneous empires of (late) antiquity, whose political, ideological, and religious structures are the results of complex processes of cultural borrowings and acculturation.
He has authored and co-edited several books, among them Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia (Cambridge UP, 2011); Aspects of History and Epic in Ancient Iran (Center for Hellenic Studies—Harvard UP, 2012); The Talmud in Its Iranian Context (co-editor, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010); Persia beyond the Oxus (guest editor, Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 2012); and Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore. Washington, D.C./Cambridge, Mass.: Ilex Foundation/ Center for Hellenic Studies – Harvard University Press, 2019. He is currently preparing a new history of the Sasanian empire and an edition and translation of the Sasanian royal and private inscriptions (third and fourth century CE), under contract with Cambridge University Press.
He has been the recipient of several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013–14.
Address: University of California, Los Angeles
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
415 Portola Plaza
386 Humanities Building
Mail code 151105
Los Angeles, California 90095–1511
less
InterestsView All (100)
Uploads