Iranology

The Iranology Working Group aims to be a space in which to study the languages and literatures surviving from the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language tree, such as Persian (Old, Middle, New), Avestan, Parthian, Sogdian, Bactrian, among others, intending as well to build connections to adjacent disciplines such as Achaemenid, Sasanian, or Zoroastrian Studies, Iranian and Central Asia Studies, and others.

We intend to be a reading and research group focused on the contemporary critical and philological scholarship around these languages, particularly but not limited to sociolinguistics, historical morphology, and to the specific issues of transmission that pertain to small corpus languages. We aim also to provide a context for groups aiming to study and to read them at an informal level.

Meetings are open to students, faculty, and staff alike, they are held monthly and may take various forms, but for 2022–23 we expect them to take the shape of pre-circulated secondary literature readings presented either by a member of the group or by an invited speaker.