My goal as a teacher and mentor is to help students develop a tangible understanding of social-scientific concepts such as inequality, freedom, poverty, diversity, and justice, so that they are ready to engage with everyday complexities of the socio-political world. In my research I strive to concretize snippets of everyday life by placing them in a comparative and historical context, thereby connecting them to macro structures. The same ideal inspires my learning objectives for students. I design courses so that students learn to observe the historical context behind social phenomena; transcend place-specific perceptions by thinking globally; and develop writing skills that translate these insights into vivid and convincing analyses of their subject of study.
With this general outlook, I have designed the following advanced seminars:
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War, Revolution, and Society in the Middle East
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Social Theory and the Global South
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Cultural Sociology of Informal Politics
I am prepared to teach general courses as well, including the following:
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History of Political Institutions in Modern Iran
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Contemporary Middle East Politics
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Comparative-historical Research Methods
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Qualitative Research Methods
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Classics of Social and Political Thought (taught at the University of Chicago, Spring 2017), Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory