Reading Persian for Research

Catalog description

Through a broad range of historical and academic texts in Persian, students will prepare to read and interpret Persian with the help of a dictionary at a level sufficient for carrying out academic research. In this course, students will engage with great thinkers, jurists, poets, and chroniclers of the Persian-speaking world: from the bold, multivalent poems of Jahan Malek Khatun, to the philosophical insights of Ghazali, the Machiavellian stylings of Hossein Va’ez Kāshefi, and the surprisingly candid memoirs of Qajar princess Taj al-Saltaneh. As the course is focused on preparing students for graduate language exams and research, it will not be actively working on students’ speaking or listening skills in Persian. It is designed for students who have completed the Intermediate Persian language sequence at Brown, or who have attained a similar proficiency level elsewhere.