Fatemeh Keshavarz Ph.D. is an Iranian academic, Rumi and Persian studies scholar, and a poet in Persian and English. She is the Roshan Chair of Persian Studies and Director of the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, since 2012. Previously, she served as a professor of Persian Language and Comparative Literature for twenty years and chair of the department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis from 2004 to 2011. Over the years, she has published several notable books including Reading Mystical Lyric: the Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi, Recite in the Name of the Red Rose and Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran. As an activist for peace and justice, in 2008, she received the Hershel Walker 'Peace and Justice' Award.
Professor Keshavarz taught at Washington University 1990 until 2012. She served as Director of the Graduate Program in Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies, Director of the Center for the Study of Islamic Societies and Civilizations, President of the Association of Women Faculty, and Chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. In 2012, she became the Director and Chair of Roshan Institute Center for Persian Studies at University of Maryland. Among Keshavarz's works is her book Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran. The book offers ideas in contrast to Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books that explores the relationship between literature and society in the post-revolutionary Iran. Keshavarz believes that Nafisi's book presents "many damaging misrepresentations" of Iran and its people, relying more on stereotypes and easy comparisons than on an accurate portrayal of the country and its people. In 2008, the On Being radio program Speaking of Faith: The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi, on which Fatemeh Keshavarz was a featured guest in 2007 for American Public Media, was granted a Peabody Award. Peabody Award is considered electronic media's most coveted trophy in the United States.
Books
Fatemeh Keshavarz, Talashi dar Aghaz, collection of poems.
Fatameh Keshavarz, A Descriptive and Analytical Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine — Winner of the Dunne & Wilson Award.
