A nation must think before it acts.
The U.S. and Iran (audio)
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her book, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804-1946 (Princeton University Press, 1999) discusses Iranian nationalism and analyzes the significance of land and border disputes, with attention to Iran’s shared boundaries with the Ottoman Empire (later Iraq and Turkey), Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf region. Her book is being translated into Persian by Kitabsara Press (Tehran, Iran). Professor Kashani-Sabet teaches courses on various aspects of modern Middle Eastern history, including ethnic and political conflicts, gender and women’s issues, popular culture, diplomatic history, revolutionary ideologies, and general surveys. She is finishing a book entitled, Conceiving Citizens: Women, Sexuality, and Religion in Modern Iran (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2010) She is also completing a book on America’s historical relationship with Iran and the Islamic world entitled, The Making of the ‘Great Satan’: A History of US – Iranian Relations (under contract with Princeton University Press). In addition to her academic work, Professor Kashani-Sabet has written several fictional pieces. Her first novel, Martyrdom Street, will be published by Syracuse University Press in 2010. Dr. Kashani-Sabet has directed the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. She is a member of the Association of Iranian American Writers. She received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead Scholar; and received her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history at Yale University.
This essay is based on a lecture for a two-day History Institute for Teachers sponsored by FPRI’s Wachman Center in cooperation with the American Institute for History Education on U.S. Foreign Policy and the Modern Middle East.