Ali Gheissari

Ali Gheissari "is professor of history at the University of San Diego specializing on the intellectual history of modern Iran. He studied at the Faculty of Law and Political Science, Tehran University, and at St Antony's College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments at Tehran University, the Oriental Institute at Oxford, and UCLA. Selected publications: Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century (University of Texas Press, 1998); "Poetry and Politics of Farrokhi Yazdi," Iranian Studies 26:1-2 (1993); "Truth and Method in Modern Iranian Historiography and Social Sciences," Critique 6 (1995); "Critique of Ideological Literature: A Review of Intellectual and Doctrinaire Writings in Iran," Iran Nameh 12:2 (1994); "Modernity and Nationalism in the Literature of the late-Qajar and early-Pahlavi Iran (1921-1941)," Iran Nameh 18:3 (2000); "Iran's Democracy Debates," co-author Vali Nasr, Middle East Policy 11:2 (2004). "Despots of the World Unite! Satire in the Persian Constitutional Press: Introducing Majalleh-ye Estebdad, 1907-1908," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 24:1 (2005)."

He is based in the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego.


 * Director, Iranian American Scholarship Fund

Recent Books

 * Contemporary Iran: Economy, Society, Politics (ed., Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2009).
 * Tabriz and Rasht in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (Tehran, 2008).
 * Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2006).
 * Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century (University of Texas Press, 1998 & 2008).