Alireza Doostdar
Biographic Data
| ID | 203358 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alireza Doostdar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alireza |
| FAMILY NAME | Doostdar |
| SIGNATURE | DOOSTDAR A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
God and Revolution in Iran
This article examines the power of God in postrevolutionary Iran through an exploration of divine ambiguity in relation to political experience. Over the past four decades, the Iranian political-theological landscape has gone through dramatic transformations in imagining God's interventions in the space of human history. For Ayatollah Khomeini and his revolutionary followers, the Islamic Republic began as a miracle and matured with divine assista…
Horror Refigured
Afterword
This afterword comments on the three articles in the special section titled “Islam and Regimes of Evidence.” Drawing on the Bakhtin circle's theory of speech genres, Doostdar examines Islamic evidentiary utterances as forms of speech with distinctive internal and external orientations
Impossible occultists: Practice and participation in an Islamic tradition
Since the turn of the 21st century, many middle-class Iranians have turned to the Islamic tradition of occult sciences to find solutions to difficult life problems. Despite the intensity of their engagements, these Iranians often consider occult practice impossible. Their struggles elucidate differences between practicing a tradition and participating in it: In practice, one's purposes (healing a friend, cursing an enemy, winning a love interest,…
The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny
What do the occult sciences, séances with the souls of the dead, and appeals to saintly powers have to do with rationality? Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail many such practices as “superstitious,” instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, far from diminishing the diverse methods through which Ira…
The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny
What do the occult sciences, séances with the souls of the dead, and appeals to saintly powers have to do with rationality? Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail many such practices as "superstitious," instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, far from diminishing the diverse methods through which Ira…
Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny
Empirical Spirits: Islam, Spiritism, and the Virtues of Science in Iran
This article examines some aspects of the reception of French Spiritism and psychical research in twentieth century Iran: its promotion by Iranian modernist intellectuals before the Second World War, and its appropriation by Shi'i Muslim 'ulama in the 1940s and 1960s. Spiritism appealed to those intellectuals and scholars who sought to reconcile their commitments to science with their religious longings and dedication to moral reform. In comparin…
The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging: On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan
This article is an ethnographic study of Persian-language weblogs (blogs), focusing on a divisive argument among Iranian bloggers that came to be known as the "vulgarity debate." Sparked by a controversial blogger who ridiculed assertions that Islam was compatible with human rights, the debate revolved around the claim that blogging had a "vulgar spirit" that made it easy for everything from standards of writing to principles of logical reasoning…
The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging: On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan
This article is an ethnographic study of Persian-language weblogs (blogs), focusing on a divisive argument among Iranian bloggers that came to be known as the "vulgarity debate." Sparked by a controversial blogger who ridiculed assertions that Islam was compatible with human rights, the debate revolved around the claim that blogging had a "vulgar spirit" that made it easy for everything from standards of writing to principles of logical reasoning…
Empirical Spirits: Islam, Spiritism, and the Virtues of Science in Iran
This article examines some aspects of the reception of French Spiritism and psychical research in twentieth century Iran: its promotion by Iranian modernist intellectuals before the Second World War, and its appropriation by Shi'i Muslim 'ulama in the 1940s and 1960s. Spiritism appealed to those intellectuals and scholars who sought to reconcile their commitments to science with their religious longings and dedication to moral reform. In comparin…
The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny
What do the occult sciences, séances with the souls of the dead, and appeals to saintly powers have to do with rationality? Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail many such practices as "superstitious," instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, far from diminishing the diverse methods through which Ira…
Impossible occultists: Practice and participation in an Islamic tradition
Since the turn of the 21st century, many middle-class Iranians have turned to the Islamic tradition of occult sciences to find solutions to difficult life problems. Despite the intensity of their engagements, these Iranians often consider occult practice impossible. Their struggles elucidate differences between practicing a tradition and participating in it: In practice, one's purposes (healing a friend, cursing an enemy, winning a love interest,…
The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging: On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan
This article is an ethnographic study of Persian-language weblogs (blogs), focusing on a divisive argument among Iranian bloggers that came to be known as the "vulgarity debate." Sparked by a controversial blogger who ridiculed assertions that Islam was compatible with human rights, the debate revolved around the claim that blogging had a "vulgar spirit" that made it easy for everything from standards of writing to principles of logical reasoning…
Empirical Spirits: Islam, Spiritism, and the Virtues of Science in Iran
This article examines some aspects of the reception of French Spiritism and psychical research in twentieth century Iran: its promotion by Iranian modernist intellectuals before the Second World War, and its appropriation by Shi'i Muslim 'ulama in the 1940s and 1960s. Spiritism appealed to those intellectuals and scholars who sought to reconcile their commitments to science with their religious longings and dedication to moral reform. In comparin…
The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny
What do the occult sciences, séances with the souls of the dead, and appeals to saintly powers have to do with rationality? Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail many such practices as “superstitious,” instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, far from diminishing the diverse methods through which Ira…
The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny
What do the occult sciences, séances with the souls of the dead, and appeals to saintly powers have to do with rationality? Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail many such practices as "superstitious," instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, far from diminishing the diverse methods through which Ira…
Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny
Afterword
This afterword comments on the three articles in the special section titled “Islam and Regimes of Evidence.” Drawing on the Bakhtin circle's theory of speech genres, Doostdar examines Islamic evidentiary utterances as forms of speech with distinctive internal and external orientations
Impossible occultists: Practice and participation in an Islamic tradition
Since the turn of the 21st century, many middle-class Iranians have turned to the Islamic tradition of occult sciences to find solutions to difficult life problems. Despite the intensity of their engagements, these Iranians often consider occult practice impossible. Their struggles elucidate differences between practicing a tradition and participating in it: In practice, one's purposes (healing a friend, cursing an enemy, winning a love interest,…
Horror Refigured
God and Revolution in Iran
This article examines the power of God in postrevolutionary Iran through an exploration of divine ambiguity in relation to political experience. Over the past four decades, the Iranian political-theological landscape has gone through dramatic transformations in imagining God's interventions in the space of human history. For Ayatollah Khomeini and his revolutionary followers, the Islamic Republic began as a miracle and matured with divine assista…
Islamic Studies and History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Islam (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Theology (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · History (3 works)