Name: Milad Odabaei

Recipient Type: Scholarship Recipient

Recipient Year: 2016

School Name: UC Berkeley

Major: Anthropology

Description: In 2017, Milad Odabaei received a PhD from the department of Anthropology and the Program in Critical Theory at University of California, Berkeley. His research examines the practices of reading, translation, and history-writing in modern Iran where “translation” of European social thought has emerged as a central form of intellectual production. He studies the intersection of translation and the movement of Iranian political discourses, including Shi’a Islamic political discourse, in the modern period. His dissertation, “Giving Words: Translation and History in Modern Iran,” offered an examination of the emergence of translation in the nineteenth century prior to the 1906 Constitutional Revolution; its developments in the twentieth century around the 1979 Revolution; and identified the fault-lines that underlie contemporary post-revolutionary practices of translation and that constitute their limitations and potentialities.

Sponsor: South Bay Islamic Association (SBIA) Scholarship