Recipient of a Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship, 2016-2017

Milad Odabaei 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,” offers 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 identifies the fault-lines that underlie contemporary post-revolutionary practices of translation and that constitute their limitations and potentialities.