Newsletter: August 4, 2022

A family meal in Beverly Hills (07/28/2022)

Welcome to my newsletter and blog: Persepolis Unbound. My name is Keanu Heydari. I’m a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I study the Iranian diaspora in France in the twentieth century. I’m also interested in New Testament studies and modern theology.

Research updates

I’ve been in Los Angeles for over a month now, and I’ve only just now started the process of unwinding, relaxing, and recovering from my research year in Paris. Seemingly endless errands and bureaucracy in Southern California are like the Scylla and Charybdis between which I am forced to navigate before my return trip to Ann Arbor later this month. For those still interested in the case: out of seven boxes of books shipped from Paris to L.A., still only four have arrived. Two appear to be in France still, and one seems to be under inspection by customs.

I’m not fully in the clear, though—I’m still working on an article in French for inclusion in a monograph about exile and the Iranian diaspora. I’ll be meeting with my team of authors and editors next week.

Interesting reads

In my spare time, I’ve been catching up with readings in Karl Barth studies.

My travel-ready Barth (half-) shelf

Marty Folsom’s new volume, Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Everyone, is a real tour de force. The book is an introduction to Barth’s mature thought in the Church Dogmatics. Using innovative pedagogical tools, the text is perfect for anyone unfamiliar with where to start with regard to Barth’s published writings.

I’ve also been reading Barth’s own commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism. Especially in this text, we see Barth’s delightful sharpness in his willingness to speak the truth of the Gospel for the life of the world today.

Our time is the time of his present and his future, his lordship. It stands under the sign of the change which happened in his death and resurrection, in expectancy of his perfect future revelation. It is the end-time, the time hurrying from this hither to this tither.

Also on the list is Ervand Abrahamian’s Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, 1982). I hope to finish the book and share some thoughts with you by the end of the month.