Ali Gheissari
Ali Gheissari is visiting professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, and professor of History at the University of San Diego, specializing in 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, and has held visiting appointments at Tehran University, the Oriental Institute at Oxford, and UCLA. Selected publications include: Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (2006); Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century (1998); Persian translation of Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Ethics (1991); “Poetry and Politics of Farrokhi Yazdi” in Iranian Studies (1993); “Truth and Method in Modern Iranian Historiography and Social Sciences” in Critique (1995); “Critique of Ideological Literature: A Review of Intellectual and Doctrinaire Writings in Iran” in Iran Nameh (1994); “Modernity and Nationalism in the Literature of the late-Qajar and early-Pahlavi Iran (1921-1941)” in Iran Nameh (2000); “Iran's Democracy Debate,” in Middle East Policy (2004); “Despots of the World Unite! Satire in the Persian Constitutional Press,” in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2005); “Merchants without Frontier: Trade, Travel, and a Revolution in late Qajar Iran,” in Roxane Farmanfarmaian (ed.), War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and Present (forthcoming, 2007). He has recently completed work on two documentary volumes in Persian, entitled: Merchants in Tabriz and Rasht during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911); and a complete edition of the political periodical, Majalleh-ye Estebdad (Journal of Despotism), published during the 1907-1908 phase of the Iranian constitutional revolution. The focus of his current research is on constitutional rights and Iran’s legal history in the1907-1941 period.