Dominic Brookshaw

Dominic Parviz Brookshaw is Senior Research Fellow in Persian at Wadham, and Senior Research Fellow in Persian and Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at The Oriental Institute. He holds a DPhil from Oxford in medieval Persian poetry, and a BA from Oxford in Arabic with Persian.

The current focus of Professor Brookshaw’s research is the intersection between performance, patronage, and desire in texts produced by poets and other literati who were active in Shiraz in the fourteenth century CE. In his wider research, Brookshaw examines the emergence and genesis of Persian wine poetry in the eastern Iranian lands in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the relationship of this poetry to the earlier Arabic khamriya, the heteroerotic and homoerotic dynamics of Persian and Arabic lyric poetry, and the interplay between the bacchic and the panegyric in the Persian ghazal.

In terms of the modern period, Brookshaw looks at women poets and their royal patrons in the first half of the Qajar period (circa 1797-1848), and he is currently working on a monograph in which he investigates the role played by poetry in the formation of a royal cultural policy in early nineteenth-century Iran. Brookshaw’s research on modern/ist twentieth-century Persian poetry is centred on Iranian poets and their dialogue with (and ultimate subversion of) the Persian poetic canon. His other research interests include poets of the Iranian diaspora, non-Muslim religious minorities in Iran, and Persian language learning.

Before arriving at Wadham in September 2013, Brookshaw taught Persian literature and language at Stanford University (2011-2013), the University of Manchester (2007-2011), McGill University (2005-2007), and the University of Oxford (2002-2005). From 2004-2014 he served as Assistant Editor for Iranian Studies. He is a former member of the Board of the International Society for Iranian Studies, and of the Governing Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies.

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Monograph:

Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-century Iran, I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury (2019)

Edited Volumes:

Ruse and Wit: The Humorous in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish Narrative, Ilex Foundation/Harvard University Press (2012)

Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran:  Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry (co-edited with Nasrin Rahimieh), I.B. Tauris (2010) 

Journal Articles:

“Mytho-Political Remakings of Ferdowsi's Jamshid in the Lyric Poetry of Injuid and Mozaffarid Shiraz,” Iranian Studies, 48:3 (2015), 463-487 

“Qajar Confection: The Production and Dissemination of Women's Poetry in Early Nineteenth-century Iran,” Middle Eastern Literatures, 17:2 (2014), 113-146

“Lascivious Vines, Corrupted Virgins, and Crimes of Honor: Variations on the Wine Production Myth as Narrated in Early Persian Poetry,” Iranian Studies, 47:1 (2014), 87-129 

“Women in Praise of Women: Female Poets and Female Patrons in Qajar Iran,” Iranian Studies, 46:1 (2013), 17-48 

“To be Feared and Desired: Turks in the Collected Works of ‘Ubayd-i Zakani,” Iranian Studies, 42:5 (2009), 725-744 

“Revivification of an Ossified Genre? Simin Behbahani and the Persian Ghazal,” Iranian Studies, 41:1 (2008), 75-90 

“Odes of a Poet-princess: the Ghazals of Jahan-Malik Khatun,” Iran XLIII (2005), 173-195 

“Palaces, Pavilions and Pleasure-gardens: the Context and Setting of the Medieval Majlis,” Middle Eastern Literatures, 6:2 (2003), 199-223 

Book Chapters:

“Women Poets,” in Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (ed), Literature of the Early Twentieth Century: From the Constitutional Period to Reza Shah, A History of Persian Literature, vol. XI, I.B. Tauris (2015), 240-310

“Have You Heard the One about the Man from Qazvin? Regionalist Humor in the Works of ‘Ubayd-i Zakani,” in Dominic Parviz Brookshaw (ed), Ruse and Wit: The Humorous in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish Narrative, Ilex Foundation Series, Harvard University Press (2012), 44-69   

“Places of Confinement, Liberation, and Decay: The Home and the Garden in the Poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad,” in Dominic Parviz Brookshaw and Nasrin Rahimieh (eds), Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry, Iran and the Persianate World Series, I.B. Tauris (2010), 35-52 

Persian Language Vocabulary and Textbooks:

Media Persian: An Essential Vocabulary, Edinburgh University Press (2011)

The Routledge Introductory Persian Course: Farsi Shirin Ast (co-authored with Pouneh Shabani Jadidi) Routledge (2010)

The Routledge Intermediate Persian Course: Farsi Shirin Ast Book 2 (co-authored with Pouneh Shabani Jadidi) Routledge (2012)