News of the Association
ASPS Meetings at MESA
The ASPS board meeting and business meeting will be held at MESA in San Diego California. Date, venue, and time TBA.
New ASPS Publications
The ASPS has published a Colloquial Tajik Phrasebook and Grammar (including colloquial Tajiki-Persian comparison of grammar), co-authored by Bahriddin Aliev and Aya Okawa. Copies are available to ASPS members at a discounted price of $10 (otherwise $15). For purchase, please fill out the order form below and send to Sunil Sharma.
Letter from the Incoming President, Fall 2009
It is with trepidation as well as excitement that I begin my second tem as President of ASPS. Trepidation because, as was true the first time I assumed the position, in 2003, I succeed Said Arjomand, founder and three-time President, whose continuing dedication to ASPS has helped sustain it as a flourishing organization and whose example will be hard to follow. Trepidation (and concern) also because current conditions in Iran, the core country of our mission and activities, have made travel to the Islamic Republic for many of us difficult and personal interaction with our Iranian colleagues increasingly problematic. On the other hand, my tenure builds on the solid foundations laid by Said (as well as others active on the board), and I am excited about the various initiatives that are currently underway and the opportunities offered by the future.
Let me therefore first thank Said as outgoing President for the energy and acumen he put into keeping the organization healthy and active, for the leading role he played securing on-going funding, and for having steered our journal, the Journal of Persianate Studies, so expertly as its editor, enhancing it prestige and visibility by bringing it under the care of Brill Publishers.
My heartfelt thanks also go the various board members. As Said observed in a previous newsletter, the current board has proven to be the most active ever. I wish to thank in particular Jo-Ann Gross for shouldering the responsibility for the Tajikistan branches of ASPS, for securing continuous sponsorship for the important Central Eurasia Research Fund (CERF), and for managing the same fund. I thank Habib Borjian for his keeping our financial house in good order as well as for his crucial role in organizing the Lahore conference, and Sunil Sharma for his work on the joint publication series with the Miras-e Maktub Center for Written Heritage, Tehran, Sources on Persianate Civilization. Mirjam Kunkler, the outgoing Newsletter and Website Editor, has done a wonderful job taking care of the News-letter and Website for several years, increasing its comprehensiveness and improving its quality and design. I welcome Ghazzal Dabiri of Columbia University who has gra-ciously agreed to be our next Newsletter Editor. And last but not least, Parvaneh Pourshariati deserves many thanks for her hard work arranging the improvement of our payment system on the website. To Shahab Razavi of Georgia Tech University goes the credit of making Paypal work for us. He has kindly agreed to update the website as well.
I acknowledge with gratitude the continuing support we have received from an anonymous source whose generosity has
made CERF a thriving component of the ASPS for a number of years now, as well as the sponsorship for the journal from the Soudavar Foundation. My thanks also go to the American Institute of Iranian Studies for its generous support of our 4th biennial convention and to its director, Dr. Erica Ehrenberg, for joining us in Lahore.
We are looking forward to an exciting MESA program in Boston in November, with a quadruple panel on Iran in late antiquity, an unprecedented ASPS-sponsored event organized by Parvaneh Pourshariati. The participants will be honored at the ASPS reception. Our board meeting is scheduled to be held on Saturday Nov. 21, 1:00-2:00, and our business meeting will follow immediately thereafter, 2:00-3:00. I hope al of you will attend to discuss current and future activities, including the next bian-nual meeting. ASPS will hold its customary reception in the hotel, most likely on Saturday evening, venue TBA.
All paid-up ASPS members should have received vol. 2:1 of the Journal of Persianate Societies. Beyond that, we are looking forward to vol. 2:2, an exciting issue that includes a symposium titled "The Eighteenth-Century Fracturing of the Persianate World" edited by Sunil Sharma and Mana Kia, to be published shortly.
I call upon all of you to help make ASPS an even better organi-zation than it already is, by publicizing its activities, working toward increased membership, suggesting opportunities for continued and expanded fund-raising―a vital though not an easy task in these lean times. We now have Paypal set up on our website, so that payment of dues can now be made easily within a matter of seconds. Just visit www.persianatesocieties.org/main/membership.php and you will see. Finally, I invite all members to think with me about ways to maintain and expand the links that form the heart and the rationale of the organization, between scholars in the West and our colleagues in the various parts of the Persianate world.
Rudi Matthee
Report from the Regional Offices
Jo-Ann Gross, member of the ASPS Board of Directors and Professor of Middle Eastern and Central Eurasian History at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), traveled to Tajikistan in July-August 2009, where she met with Lola Dodkhudoeva, Regional Director in Dushanbe, and with Umed Mamadhserzodshoev, Regional Director in Khorog. She also met with the Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies and Written Heritage of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan to discuss ASPS activities, during which she expressed her gratitude to him for continuing to house the ASPS Dushanbe office. She discussed ASPS activi-ties planned for 2009-10, and Larisa Dodkhudoeva convened a meeting with the most recent CERF awardees, each of whom gave reports on their current research and publication plans. The Dushanbe office is preparing to publish the proceedings of last year’s roundtable on the state of research and the academe in post-civil war Tajikistan, and the office in Khorog is preparing to publish their first majaleh on the history, culture and literature of Badakhshan.
Opening of New Regional Office in Lahore
On Monday April 2, 2009, the new office of the ASPS was opened at the Department of Persian, University Oriental Col-lege, University of the Punjab, Lahore. ASPS was represented by Dr. Said Amir Arjomand, President, Dr. Habib Borjian, Secretary-Treasurer, and Dr. Houchang Chehabi, member of the Board of Directors. The University of the Punjab was represented by Professor Muhammad Saleem Mazhar, Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, and Professor Ghulam Moeen-ud-Din Nizami, Chairman of the Department of Persian. Professor Muhammad Iqbal Saqib represented the Government College University, Lahore. The event began at 4:00 PM, and included the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the opening of the ASPS Pakistan Regional Office, a reception at the Department of Persian, University of the Punjab, and a visit to the Department of Persian at the Government College University at the invitation of Professor Iqbal Saqib.