Dominic Parviz Brookshaw

Dominic Parviz Brookshaw is a Professorial Fellow at Wadham, and the Masoumeh and Fereydoon Soudavar Chair of Persian Studies at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Professor Brookshaw holds a DPhil from Oxford in premodern Persian poetry, and a BA from Oxford in Arabic with Persian.

Brookshaw is a literary historian who works across a wide range of Persian genres and periods stretching from the Tenth Century CE to the present day. His research focuses on three primary areas: i) medieval Persian poetry and prose (with specific reference to patronage, performance, conviviality, sexuality, and intertextuality); ii) the poetry of nineteenth-century Iran (with a focus on gender, canonicity, ethno-linguistic and religious minorities, and indigenous literary history); and iii) women poets of twentieth-century Iran and their dialogue with (and disruption of) the male-dominated literary system. Brookshaw's publications have challenged a number of established scholarly paradigms in the field of Persian literary studies: he has questioned the anachronistic and rigid mystical/non-mystical binaries that dominate scholarship on Hafiz; demonstrated the value of reading premodern Persian lyric poetry with due attention to the social and aesthetic conditions within which it was produced, performed, disseminated, and consumed; and worked to rewrite Persian women poets individually and collectively back into the literary history of both the medieval and modern periods. In addition to his publications on Persian literary culture, Brookshaw has written on contemporary Iran’s non-Muslim religious minorities. Alongside his scholarly works, Brookshaw has authored and co-authored Persian language learning materials that are now widely used in Persian language programmes at universities in the UK, Canada, and the US.

Before arriving at Wadham in September 2013, Brookshaw was Assistant Professor of Persian and Comparative Literature at Stanford University (2011-2013). He currently serves as the President of the Association for Iranian Studies, and he is a former member of the Governing Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies.

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Monograph in progress:

Center, Periphery, and Gender: Women Poets and Poetic Resurgence in Early Qajar Iran (under contract with University of Michigan Press)

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:

“To dance like Solomon: imitation and martyrdom in a Qajar ghazal,” Middle Eastern Literatures 27:1 (2025), 35-61

“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)