Newsletter: September 10, 2022

Reference books on my office desk at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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.

Updates

As I mentioned on July 21, I applied to renew the European History Interdisciplinary Workshop for the 2022-23 academic year. I’ve received good news: the workshop has been approved! Its first meeting will take place on September 21. Check out the updated website here.

The semester is off to a busy start. And yet—the campus atmosphere is different than before the pandemic. It’s not at all that something feels particularly off, but rather that the performance of normalcy is disorienting—at least it is to me. Some students, faculty, and staff are masked, while the majority are not.

Writing a dissertation while teaching doesn’t feel the same as doing preliminary examinations while teaching—what I did during my third year. It is freeing to have more time to write, of course, but the sheer force of will required to structure the days such that there are “deliverables” is sometimes lacking.

This semester, one of my intentions is to learn how to a) gracefully accept and b) wisely incorporate the feedback I receive on my writing. A second intention pertains to being accountable to myself for the time I spend writing every week: I want to spend at least a few hours each week immersed in “deep work” focused on my dissertation.

While I don’t know if it’s possible to fully dedicate any particular space I frequent to working on my dissertation, I will use both my desk at home and my office desk to work on my dissertation. Perhaps a good idea would be to select a coffee shop where my only work is focused on my dissertation.