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Oliver Bast, a resident fellow in Saybrook, is Visiting Fellow in Iranian Studies at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies for the 2011-12 academic year.
Oliver Bast, Dr. phil., Maître-ès-Lettres, is Senior Lecturer [Associate Professor] in Middle Eastern History and Persian at the University of Manchester [UK] where he was the head of the department of Middle Eastern Studies until September 2011. He read History and Persian Studies at Berlin (Humboldt-Universität), Tehran (University of Tehran), Paris (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3) and Bamberg (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg). Bast holds a joint doctorate (thèse en co-tutelle) from the Sorbonne and Bamberg.
Bast’s research interests include the diplomatic and political history of Modern Iran as well as the interface between historiography, politics and cultural memory. He is the author of Les allemands en Perse pendant la Première Guerre mondiale (Paris: Peeters, 1997) and editor of La Perse et la Grande Guerre (Tehran/Paris: IFRI/Peeters, 2002). Other publications include writings on German-Iranian relations as well as on various aspects of Qajar Iran, including ‘Disintegrating the ‘discourse of disintegration’: Some reflections on the historiography of the late Qajar period and Iranian cultural memory’, in Touraj Atabaki (ed.) Iran in the Twentieth Century: Historiography and Political Culture (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009).
Currently, Bast is finishing the manuscript for a book on Iran’s policy vis-à-vis the Great Powers during World War I and its immediate aftermath up to 1921. Based extensively on the Iranian archival record, this study fundamentally challenges the existing interpretive orthodoxy by giving a voice to the hitherto mostly ignored Iranian protagonists of this key period in Iran’s history.
Furthermore Bast is embarking on a new research project (tentatively) entitled The Performance of Power and the Power of Performance: An investigation into the role of Secular Ritual, Ceremonial and Celebration for the Emergence of the Nation-State in Iran (1848-1979) which intends to look at the nexus between ritual, ceremonial, festivity on the one hand and power on the other hand.
Senior Lector in Modern Greek at the Hellenic Studies Program, Maria Kaliambou earned her first degree in History and Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 1997, and her Ph.D. in Folklore Studies/European Ethnology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich in 2005. She was a post-doctoral researcher at the University Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3 (2006) and post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University (2006-2007). Since 2007 she has been teaching courses in folklore and Modern Greek language at the Hellenic Studies Program at Yale. She was also visiting lecturer at the department of Folklore Studies/European Ethnology and Modern Greek Studies, University of Munich (summers 2009, 2010). In 2006, she received the “Lutz Röhrich prize” in Germany for her book /Heimat – Glaube – Familie. Wertevermittlung in griechischen Popularmärchen (1870-1970) [Home – Faith – Family: Transmission of Values in Greek Popular Booklets of Tales (1870-1970)]. In 2011 was elected by the European Commission as Erasmus Student Ambassador of Greece. Her research interests range from folk narrative (with a specialization in folktales), popular literature,history of books, history and theory of folklore studies, Southeast European cultural studies, and European philhellenism. She is currently working on her new book “The Book Culture of Greek-Americans” and on an edition of Greek folktales. A former classical guitarist, Maria adoreslistening to classical guitar. She also loves hiking and yoga.
maria.kaliambou@yale.edu
Jun Saito is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science. Before joining the Yale faculty in 2008, he taught at Wesleyan University and at Franklin and Marshall College. He got his Ph D in political science at Yale. His research focuses on the institutional determinants of representation and redistribution, in particular how choices of constitutional structures and electoral institutions translate into redistributive consequences. He teaches courses on Japanese politics, international relations and comparative political economy in East Asia. He lives on campus with his wife Naomi and two children, Erika and Kenneth. Naomi works at Beinecke Library, Erika goes to a public elementary school in New Haven. He was once a member of the Japanese House of Representatives (2002-2003).
jun.saito@yale.edu
