Founded in 1967 in the United States, the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) is an academic society that supports and promotes Iranian Studies at the international level.
Association for Iranian Studies promotes high standards of scholarship in the field, encourages Iranian Studies teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and facilitates scholarly exchange amongst its international membership.
Association for Iranian Studies publishes Iranian Studies, a journal that serves as the field's principal journal.
Since 1993 the Association for Iranian Studies organizes biennial conferences on Iranian Studies.
Below we present the list of AIS conferences with dates and venue. You can click on each item and find the program of the conference. Unfortunately, the 2006 program is not available (hopefully, it is not lost, and the conference organizers will upload it on the website soon). 2020 conference was canceled because of COVID, but the preliminary conference program is available on the website.
- 1993 - First Biennial Conference on Iranian Studies, Arlington, USA
- 1998 - Second Conference on Iranian Studies, Bethesda, USA
- 2000 - Third Conference on Iranian Studies, Bethesda, USA
- 2002 - Fourth Conference on Iranian Studies, Bethesda, USA
- 2004 - Fifth Conference on Iranian Studies, Bethesda, USA
- 2006 - Sixth Conference on Iranian Studies, London, UK
- 2008 - Seventh Conference on Iranian Studies, Toronto, Canada
- 2010 - Eighth Conference on Iranian Studies, Santa Monica, USA
- 2012 - Ninth Conference on Iranian Studies, Istanbul, Turkey
- 2014 - Tenth Conference on Iranian Studies, Montreal, Canada
- 2016 - Eleventh Conference on Iranian Studies, Vienna, Austria
- 2018 - Twelfth Conference on Iranian Studies, Irvine, USA
- 2020 - Thirteenth Conference on Iranian Studies, Salamanca, Spain
Information about the Association for Iranian Studies' upcoming conferences, such as the call for papers, program, directions, and other useful materials, are regularly published on the association's website. Please check the Association for Iranian Studies Conferences webpage for further updates.
Each AIS conference call for papers is announced several months before the deadline so that the paper presenters have enough time to prepare and submit their abstracts.
The Iranian Studies Conference organizing committee will prepare a preliminary conference program and share it with all participants after receiving abstracts before the deadline and preparing the participants' final list.
The final version of the conference program will be published on the AIS website several days before the conference and will remain there for ages for generations of Iranian Studies students and scholar (hopefully - for example, the program of the 2006 AIS conference is not published on the website and most probably is lost. Making the conference program available on the website forever is an excellent way to pass the historical memory about each discipline's academic events to coming generations).
Each Iranian Studies conference day is separated into sessions. It seems that all sessions are divided into panels (or sometimes 'carousels'), and several panels can take place parallel to each other. During each panel 15 minutes long, 3-5 papers are presented. Below are the titles of the panels and sessions from different years' Iranian Studies Conferences.
- Political Elites in Interwar Iran
- Iranian Minority Literary Women
- Transformations in Qajar State and Society
- Armenians and Americans in the Caucasus and Iran
- Examining Zoroastrian Texts
- The Iranian Left's Pre-Revolutionary Challenges: Religion and Internationalism
- After the Persianate? The Contours of Twentieth-Century Persian Literary History
- Reflecting on the Complexity of Iranian Americans and the Iranian Diaspora
- Roots and Branches of Iranian Socio-Political Culture
- Reconceptualizing the Study of Race in Iran and the Diaspora
- Music, Culture and Society in Modern Iran
- Modern Persian Poetry in Global Context
- The Dilemma of Mithraic Studies and the Legacy of Franz Cumont
- The Iranian Left's Post-Revolutionary Prospects: Gender, Religion, and Nationality
- Safavid Elite Culture
- Using Culture and Technology in Persian Language Instruction
- The Left and the Iranian Revolution
- Economy and Society in Modern and Contemporary Iran
- Persian and Iranian Linguistics
- Pedagogical and Comparative Perspectives on Ferdowsi's Shahnameh
- Reform, Modernity, and Religion in Modern Iran
- Modern Persian Literature in Modern Iran
- Iran and the World in Late Antiquity
- Iranian Men and Masculinities: Classical and Modern Persian Literature
- New Social Research on Iran
- The Transformation of Urban and Rural in Modern and Contemporary Iran
- Various are the Hues of Indo-Persian Literature
- Rumi's Mathnawi and the Mevlevi Order: Between History and Metahistory
- Rethinking the Historical Trajectory of Iran's Modern Economy, 1921-79
- Demystifying the Magi and Sasanian History
- History and Royal Power in Persianate Chronicles: The Shamsid, Timurid, and Mughal Cases
- Nudity in Iranian Photography: From the Qajar Era to Today
- Esoteric Cosmopolitanisms of Iran: Timurid, Zand, Pahlavi
- The Poetics and Politics of Literary Change in Contemporary Persian Literature
- Interactions Between Iran and India
- Contemporary Ethnographies of Culture, Society and Authority in Iran
- Art in Iranian Public Space: Between Politics, Public Participation, and Aesthetics
- Transcultural Dialogue in Classical Persian Literature
- Post-Revolutionary Literature in the Diaspora and the Islamic Republic
- Literature in 20th Century Iran
- Riots, Looting, and Civil Unrest in Qajar Cities: Subaltern Politics and the Making of Modern Iran
- Writing Indo-Persian Cityscapes: Space, Sovereignty, and Society in the Qajar and Mughal Worlds
- Animation and Satire in Iran
- Persian Literary and Cinematic Representations of a Society in Transition
- Reconstructing the Forgotten Female: Women in the Realm of the Shahnama
- Modern Iran and the World
- The Challenges of Publishing Persian Journals
- Safavid Persia: Tribal Policies and Travel Narratives
- Looking at Each Other: Iran and Russia in the 17th through Early 20th century
- Re-Reading Iranian Shi'ism: International and Transnational Connections and Influence
- Screening Iran: New Approaches to Contemporary Iranian Film and Television
- The Politics of the Possible in Iran
- Issues of Diaspora in North America and Iran
- Ehsan Yarshater's Contribution to Iranian Studies
- War in Persian Literature
- Dissemination of Iranian Languages and Iranian Studies
- Slavery in 19th and 20th Century Iran
- The Ambit of Printing in Qajar Iran: Continent, Nation & Province
During the AIS conference, book exhibitions, round tables, discussions, receptions, and meetings are the excellent way to dive into the Iranian Studies academic discipline and, through networking, find valuable contacts and friends in this fascinating field.