Iranians In Chicagoland

A pictorial history of Iranians in Chicago offers a collection of Persian Palace photographs from Iran's exhibit at the World Columbian Exposition in 1893, along with an Iranian Moen-Ol Saltaneh's observations of 1893 Chicago.

After a brief overview of the glorious history of Iran interrupted by the invasion of external forces and periods of darkness, Journey from Tehran to Chicago addresses the mutual, beneficial interaction between Islamic and Iranian civilizations and cultures. It dissects and analyses maladaptive and adaptive behavioral patterns of certain Iranian leaders throughout history.Dr. Dizadji, an American-Iranian, describes his childhood, schooling, medical school training, and his army experience in Iran. He elaborates on the social, political, and economic states of Iran during that period, which he thinks have contributed to the Iranian revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.After the completion of his cardiology training in the United States, the author returns to Iran to achieve his intended goal, to practice medicine in Iran. However, disappointed, he returns to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow in cardiology sponsored by the National Heart Institute of the United States. He eventually engages in a successful medical practice, and teaching in Chicago. Holding several prestigious positions in the medical community, he then focuses on the health care system of the United States, discussing its rapid changes with advantages and weaknesses.

After a brief overview of the glorious history of Iran interrupted by the invasion of external forces and periods of darkness, Journey from Tehran to Chicago addresses the mutual, beneficial interaction between Islamic and Iranian civilizations and cultures. It dissects and analyses maladaptive and adaptive behavioral patterns of certain Iranian leaders throughout history. Dr. Dizadji, an American-Iranian, describes his childhood, schooling, medical school training, and his army experience in Iran. He elaborates on the social, political, and economic states of Iran during that period, which he thinks have contributed to the Iranian revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. After the completion of his cardiology training in the United States, the author returns to Iran to achieve his intended goal, to practice medicine in Iran. However, disappointed, he returns to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow in cardiology sponsored by the National Heart Institute of the United States. He eventually engages in a successful medical practice, and takes additional educational courses in Chicago. Holding several prestigious positions in the medical community, he then focuses on the health care system of the United States, discussing its rapid changes with advantages and weaknesses.

This collection of 35 Persian short stories by 26 of Iran's best known contemporary writers gives voice to the concerns, strivings, and visions of their generation. These stories depict aspects of both traditional and modern life in Iran with its many religious, political, cultural, and class tensions.

What do the occult sciences, séances with the souls of the dead, and appeals to saintly powers have to do with rationality? Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail many such practices as "superstitious," instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, far from diminishing the diverse methods through which Iranians engage with the immaterial realm, these rationalizing processes have multiplied the possibilities for metaphysical experimentation. The Iranian Metaphysicals examines these experiments and their transformations over the past century. Drawing on years of ethnographic and archival research, Alireza Doostdar shows that metaphysical experimentation lies at the center of some of the most influential intellectual and religious movements in modern Iran. These forms of exploration have not only produced a plurality of rational orientations toward metaphysical phenomena but have also fundamentally shaped what is understood as orthodox Shi‘i Islam, including the forms of Islamic rationality at the heart of projects for building and sustaining an Islamic Republic. Delving into frequently neglected aspects of Iranian spirituality, politics, and intellectual inquiry, The Iranian Metaphysicals challenges widely held assumptions about Islam, rationality, and the relationship between science and religion.

The reign of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941–79), marked the high point of Iran’s global interconnectedness. Never before had Iranians felt the impact of global political, social, economic, and cultural forces so intimately in their national and daily lives, nor had Iranian actors played such an important global role – on battlefields, barricades, and in board rooms far beyond Iran’s borders. Iranian intellectuals, technocrats, politicians, workers, artists, and students alike were influenced by the global ideas, movements, markets, and conflicts that they also helped to shape. From the launch of the Shah’s White Revolution in 1963 to his overthrow in the popular revolution of 1978–79, Iran saw the longest period of sustained economic growth that the country had ever experienced. An entire generation took its cue from the shift from oil consumption to oil production to dream of, and aspire to, a modernized Iran, and the history of Iran in this period has tended to be presented as a prologue to the revolution. Those histories usually locate the political, social, and cultural origins of the revolution firmly within a national context, into which global actors intruded as Iranian actors retreated. While engaging with that national narrative, this volume is concerned with Iran’s place in the global history of the 1960s and ’70s. It examines and highlights the transnational threads that connected Pahlavi Iran to the world, from global traffic in modern art and narcotics to the embrace of American social science by Iranian technocrats and the encounter of European intellectuals with the Iranian Revolution. In doing so, this book seeks to fully incorporate Pahlavi Iran into the global history of the 1960s and ’70s, when Iran mattered far beyond its borders.