05/23/2026
Congratulations Jaleh!!
This year, Jaleh Ebrahimi, a brilliantly creative PhD candidate at the Institute of Islamic Studies, was awarded the BLUE Fellowship for her pedagogical project, "Beings Beyond the Human." She presented her work at Building 21 on April 21, 2026. The fellowship supports interdisciplinary research and collaborative project development at Building 21. Jaleh's project is grounded in her long-term engagement with Persian tales and the fictional characters who inhabit them, and it has been shaped by three months of discussion with scholars and mentors at Building 21.
At this event, Jaleh presented a syllabus for a course designed to explore a fictional being who has lived among Persian-speaking communities and beyond for centuries. The syllabus traces this figure across time, place, language, and media, following her through historical sources from seventeenth-century Isfahan to nineteenth-century London, and into her contemporary digital presence. The syllabus draws on anthropological, philosophical, historical, and literary approaches to examine this figure's life, with the interdisciplinary form of the syllabus producing a generative method that opens new analytical possibilities.
Many congratulations to Jaleh! Tabrīk mīgīm!
