Pedram Khosronejad

author of "Qajar African Nannies," "Qajar Shiite Material Culture," "The Royal Lens," "Re-imagining Iranian African Slavery" and "Unveiling the Veiled"

December 11, 2018

Pedram Khosronejad is the Farzaneh Family Scholar and the associate director for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies Program at the Oklahoma State University and also associated member of Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laicités, CNRSParis, France. He obtained his doctorate degree at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

His research interests include cultural and social anthropology, the anthropology of death and dying, visual anthropology, visual piety, devotional artefacts, and religious material culture, with a particular interest in Iran, Persianate societies and the Islamic world.

He is author of “Les Lions en Pierre Sculptée chez les Bakhtiari: Description et significations de sculptures zoomorphes dans une société tribale du sud-ouest de l’Iran,” and “The Anthropology of Persianate Societies, Volume 2.” He is also the editor of several publications: The Art and Material Culture of Iranian Shi'ism: Iconography and Religious Devotion in Shi'i Islam; Saints and their Pilgrims in Iran and Neighboring Countries; Iranian Sacred Defence Cinema: Religion, Martyrdom and National Identity; Unburied Memories: The Politics of Bodies, and the Material Culture of Sacred Defense Martyrs in Iran. He is also chief editor of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Middle East and Central Eurasia.

In “Qajar African Nannies: African Slaves and Aristocratic Babies,” Khosronejad has amassed an incredible collection of major interest to historians of slavery, Africanists, scholars of photography, anthropologists, and others. Uniquely and collectively these affecting portraits of stone-faced, sad-eyed men, women and children tell poignant stories of loss, violent separations and brutal dislocation. Those are their stories and, as is too often forgotten, also those of their families, who lost them forever.

Looking at the vanished world Khosronejad rescued from oblivion and forces us to confront should also lead us to learn about the resilient contemporary Afro-Iranian community and its place in today's society.

“Qajar Shiite Material Culture: From the Court of Naser Al-Din Shah to Popular Religious Paintings (Visual Studies of Modern Iran)” is one of the first visual representations of the material religion and art objects of Naser al-Din Shah's court, vis à vis popular Shiite beliefs during the Naseri period. In this work, Pedram Khosronejad has paid special attention to the role of Naser al-Din Shah's popular Shiite values in shaping attitudes toward the depiction in portraiture of the Prophet Mohammad and Imam Ali.

Khosronejad's observations further confirm Naser al-Din Shah's deep-rooted connections to popular Shiite beliefs and related superstitions, along with his interest in Shiite rituals and ceremonies.

“The Royal Lens: Naser Al-Din Shah’s Photography of His Harem (Visual Studies of Modern Iran)” provides invaluable new information about the history of photography in Iran during the 19th-century Qajar period. In particular he has carefully researched the photographs taken by Naser al-Din Shah, perhaps the Qajar monarch most fascinated by Western technology. These intimate photographs of his own harem are unique and highly informative, not just for their intrinsic value in a period in which human images were disapproved of, but also for what they reveal about Naser al-Din Shah, his self-image, his household and his court.

“Re-imagining Iranian African Slavery: photography as material Culture” focuses on the overlooked study of race and ethnicity in the field of Iranian photography. The photographs showcase Africans enslaved during the Qajar period of the 1840s-1920s and are considered to be a new topic in the field of visual studies of modern Iran. This is the first ever photo exhibition organized in the United States that uses photographs of the Qajar and early Pahlavi periods to study the level of ability of the medium as material culture. The photographs included in the exhibition are from the Dr. A. Fazel Visual Archive, Media Collection and Digital Resources the Kimia Foundation, and the Farhad and Firouzeh Diba Collection of Qajar Photographs. The exhibition is sponsored by the Mellon Research Initiative Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds and co-sponsored by Bita Daryabari Presidential Chair in Persian Language and Literature and the Art History Program at UC Davis in cooperation with the Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at Oklahoma State University.

“Unveiling the Veiled: Royal Consorts, Slaves and Prostitutes in Qajar Photographs” is the first public visual venue in the field of Middle Eastern and Iranian Studies bringing together photographs of Naser al-Din Shah’s consorts and their African female slaves inside the royal harem, accompanied by images of women, probably prostitutes of the Naseri period, inside the studio of Amir Doust Mohammad Khan Moayer al-Mamalek, one of the influential members of the royal court and the king’s son-in-law.

URL: https://library-dep.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2019-honorees/pedram-khosronejad

Last Updated: 13 December 2018