Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi is Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. He has served as President of the International Society for Iranian Studies (2008-10), was the founding Chair of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto-Mississauga (2004-07), and was the Editor-in-Chief of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2001-12), a Duke University Press journal. Since 2010 he has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Iran Nameh and is coeditor with Homa Katoouzian of the Iranian Studies book series, published by Routledge. Tavakoli’s areas of specialization encompass Middle Eastern history, modernity, nationalism, gender studies, spatial governmentality, Orientalism, and Occidentalism. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of two books: Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography (Palgrave, 2001) and Tajaddud-i Bumi [Vernacular Modernity] (Nashr-i Tarikh, 2003). He is currently completing a manuscript that explores the discursive transformation of modern Persian political language from biopolitics to spatial governance. It traces the shift from a restorative rhetoric of medical sciences to the constructional language of engineering. Tavakoli is the recipient of two Outstanding Teacher awards from Illinois State University (1996 and 2001) and visiting fellowships at St. Antony's College, Oxford University (1998), the Center for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, 1992–93); and Harvard University (1991–92). He holds a BA in political science and an MA in history from the University of Iowa, and a PhD in history from the University of Chicago.