Vahid Davar Galati wins the Jafar and Shokoh Farzaneh prize for best article on Persian literature

School of Modern Languages wishes to congratulate Vahid Davar Galati, who has won Jafar and Shokoh Farzaneh prize for best article on Persian literature for his article "Az Peyvastegi ta Peyvastan: Pish-Tarhi baraye Hamase-ye Now" (From Relation to Relating: A Sketch  for the New Epic).  The prize which is managed by the Center of Middle East Studies and Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the most prestigious prizes in the field.

According to the referees, Vahid Davar's essay is an exciting and original exploration of Persian literary futures. Drawing on a wide array of theoretical and literary sources - Jorge Luis Borges, the Caribbean critic Édouard Glissant, Ferdowi's Shahnameh, recent writings by Iranian writer Abbas Abdi - Davar's work of creative criticism argues urgently and eloquently for the need to reorient the Persian literary imagination around places and dialects and literatures have been historically considered peripheral or marginal. Taking the island of Qeshm as one possible node of connection, Davar argues that the Persian canon can and should be reimagined from the "periphery," where the point is not to reassert a singular, monolithic, nation-bounded culture, but rather to discover and nurture a vibrant, Glissant-esque poetics of relation that reaches outside of itself and creates new cosmopolitan possibilities for Persian literary imagination.