The History Department is very happy to welcome new Faculty member Leila Pourtavaf, who joins as an assistant professor in Global Public History. Leila holds a PhD from the Department of History at the University of Toronto and was most recently a visiting assistant professor at NYU’s Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Her research stands at the intersection of gender, modernity, and Middle Eastern history with a focus on Qajar Iran. Her upcoming book project, The Cosmopolis Harem, looks at the social, cultural and spatial dimensions of the women’s quarter of Nasir al-Din Shah’s court in the second half of the 19th century.
Leila is also an independent curator, and her exhibition and film programs have been featured at various institutions including the Blackwood Gallery, the South Asian Visual Arts Center, Articule, and La Centrale Gallery. She has published in a wide range of journals in both academic and cultural realms, including The Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Iran Namag: Bilingual Quarterly of Iranian Studies, INCITE Journal of Experimental Media, Fuse Magazine and ArtEast. She is the editor of Féminismes Électriques (2013), a bilingual collection of essays which reflect on the history of feminist art and cultural production.
This coming year, Leila will be teaching History 1040: The Public Uses of History and History 3692: The Middle East Since 1800.