New Horizons in Premodern Iranian Studies II

 May 30, 2026 | Humanities Gateway #1030

UCI Jordan Center for Persian Studies 

New Horizons II: Preliminary Schedule

Saturday, May 30, 2026

8:30-9:00 am | Registration

9:00-9:15 am | Opening Remarks

9:15-9:30 am | Coffee Break

9:30-11:30 am | Panel I: Achaemenid Studies

Chair: Prof. Matthew Canepa (Professor and Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali
Presidential Chair in Art History and Archaeology of Ancient Iran, UCI)

Marco Ferrario (Northeast Normal University) (Zoom)
Might Makes Right? Darius and Asoka: Transcending Immanence

Ethan Friedland (UCLA)
An Orthographic Reexamination of the Arebsun “Daenamazdayasniš”
Inscription

Charlotte Howley (UCLA)
‘Social Space’ at Persepolis: the “Harem” building recontextualized

James Scherrer (UCLA)
Paid in Full: Achaemenid Accounting and The Lion Weight of Abydos

12:00-1:00 pm | Lunch

1:00-3:00 pm | Panel II: Late Antiquity and the Medieval
Iranian World

Chair: Professor Carlo Cereti (Ferdowsi Presidential Chair in Zoroastrian Studies
and Professor of Classics and Religious Studies, UCI)

Melissa DePierro (UCI)
Miniaturizing the Monumental: Examining Miniaturized
Representations of Elephants in Seleucid Art

Mark K. Gradoni (UCI)
Finding the Farmers: Searching for Peasant Settlements in the Late
Antique Shahrazur Plain (Iraqi Kurdistan)

Mahsa Pashaei (UCLA)
The Hidden Dimension of the Myth of Sīmurg in Ferdowsi’s
Shāhnāmeh

Julie Ershadi (UCLA)
Gender and Islam in Seljuqid Iran: The Poetics of Praise for Elite
Women in the 12th Century C.E.

3:00-3:15 pm | Coffee Break

3:15-4:15 pm | Panel III: Endurance and Reception

Chair: Dr. Layah Ziaii-Bigdeli (Associate Editor, Encyclopaedia Iranica)

Fatemeh Kameli (UCSB)
The Unforgotten Empire: The Perception of Achaemenid Kings in
Islamic-Era Sources (7th-15th Centuries)

Amirali Ardekanian (UCI)
Visual Diplomacy and Sovereign Oversight: Heidar Khan Milani’s
1899 Photographic Report of the Susa Excavations

Elmira Mohebalil (UCD)
Radical Joy in the Context of Resistance

4:15-4:30 pm | Coffee Break

4:30-5:30 pm | Keynote

Prof. Lara Fabian (Assistant Professor of Iranian Archaeology, UCLA)
Studying the Iranian Past in our Postglobalization Present