Research and Teaching

Saeed Talajooy was born and educated in Iran and began to engage with Persian literature in his teenage years. He studied and then taught English and world literatures in English in Iranian universities and through his teaching became interested in how ideas, characters and images travel across genres, cultures and historical periods. His PhD thesis, ‘Mythologizing the Transition: A Comparative Study of Bahram Beyzaie and Wole Soyinka’ (University of Leeds) marks this interest and his current research suggests the continuity of his engagement with inter-textual and inter-media journeys of ideas.

His current research is on the point of convergence between literary, performance and film studies and on the reflections of the changing patterns of Iranian identity in Persian literature and Iranian theatre and cinema. It involves studying the way Iranian playwrights and filmmakers refashion indigenous dramatic forms, modes of thought, myths, history and classical literary works to recreate their ideal images of Iranian identity, or the way they adapt non-Iranian novels and plays for Iranian stage and screen. It reflects on technical, thematic and intercultural adaptation as a way of promoting or resisting dominant cultural discourses. Another aspect of his research involves comparative studies of cultural resistance in African and Middle Eastern Drama. He has taught world drama in English and English language, literature and drama in Iran, and Persian language and literature, Iranian cinema, and postcolonial and comparative literature in the UK. At the moment he is working on a monograph entitled Modernity and Iranian Drama: Plays and Playwrights, a collection of five Iranian plays in English and his essays on the Iranian theatre.

His teaching includes convening honour and postgraduate modules for advanced Persian language, modern and classical Persian literature and Iranian Cinema and Theatre as well as comparative literature modules.

Research Key Terms

Cultural Studies as well as Translation, Postcolonial, Performance and Film Theories; Comparative Studies of Persian Literature and World Literature in English; Persian Language; Iranian Drama, Theatre and Cinema; Modernity and Iranian Culture; Modern Persian Poetry and Fiction; and Classical Persian Literature, particularly Shahnameh, Khayyam, Baba Taher, Nezami and Rumi.

See also

Forum for the Cultural Studies of Iran