University of California, Irvine is one of the world’s leading institutions for the study of Persia and the ancient Iranian world. UCI offers unique possibilities at a single institution for the study of the art, architecture, archaeology, history, languages, and religions of ancient Iran as well as related cultures in South Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean.
The Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture is UC Irvine’s interdisciplinary research center for Iranian Studies. The oldest research institute of its type in the western United States and University of California, the Center focuses on interdisciplinary research projects that bridge the arts, humanities, engineering, medicine, and the sciences and its faculty are spread throughout multiple departments. In a period of rapid growth, its faculty include multiple endowed chairs who work collaboratively on research, teaching, and conference programming. Courses, offered by the affiliated faculty, are the backbone of Center’s academic and pedagogical mission. These include courses on language, literature, history, music and culture at undergraduate and graduate levels. The Center also sponsors summer intensive courses in Avestan, Old Persian, Parthian, Middle Persian (Pahlavi) languages. Every year the Center holds multiple international conferences and symposiums on the ancient Iranian world as well as oversees a journal, online publications and resources, and book series in ancient Iranian studies. For upcoming lectures and symposia, see the Center’s events page. and annual lectures.
UCI’s Graduate Specialization in Ancient Iran and the Premodern Persianate World provides doctoral students a rigorous interdisciplinary course of study to prepare them to conduct advanced research as well as community of scholars working in related areas. In addition to UCI’s faculty and programmatic strengths, which are unparalleled at any other North American institution, students can draw on complementary resources at other nearby UC campuses. The Center’s faculty regularly collaborate with our colleagues at UCLA in programming and the strengths of the two institutions are mutually complementary.