Education
PhD in Comparative Literature, Emphasis in Critical Theory
Department of Comparative Literature, University of California in Irvine, 2017-21

MA in Comparative Literature
Department of Comparative Literature, University of California in Irvine, 2015-16

MA in Literatures of Modernity
Department of English, Toronto Metropolitan University, 2012-13

BASc in Mechanical Engineering
Department of Engineering, University of Waterloo, 2004-09

 

Research Experience

Research Assistant to Dr. Gayatri Spivak, Critical Theory Institute, UC Irvine, 2017

Research Assistant to Dr. Victoria Birgani, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, UTM, 2016-17

Research Assistant to Dr. Eric Cazdyn, Centre for Comparative Literature, UofT, 2014-15

Research Assistant to Dr. Monique Tschofen, Communication and Culture, TMU, 2012-13

 

Teaching Experience

Course Director
Artificial Intelligence and Its Strategic Discontents
Faculty of Arts and Science, UofT, 2023-present

American Foreign Policy Through the Domestic Lens, 1945-Present
Humanities, UC Irvine, 2016-20

Representations of Crisis in Contemporary America
Humanities, UC Irvine, 2015-16

Teaching Assistant
Action, Spectacle
Cinema Studies Institute, UofT, 2014-15

Nature of Narrative I & II
Literatures of Modernity, TMU, 2012-13

 

Conference Papers, Panels and Workshops

Select Workshops
“Return to the New Commons” with Étienne Balibar
The Institute for Social Inquiry, The New School, 2019

“Theory and Critical Algorithmic Studies”
Humanities Research Institute, UC Irvine, 2018

“The Dickens Universe”
UC Santa Cruz, 2013

Select Panels
“Returning to the Politico-strategic Question in Post-Capitalist Aesthetics”
Oppression, Exploitation and Struggle in the Time of Monsters, SOAS, 2023

“The Kurdish Freedom Movement and Hope in Times of Global Capitalism”
The Politics of Hope, the 8th South-South Forum on Sustainability, 2021

“IRI’s Neoliberal Project amid Iran’s Transition to the Global Markets”

Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University, 2020

“Critical Reflections on Survival, Endurance and Strategy in Rojava”
Rethinking Crisis, Resistance and Strategy, Panteion University of Athens, 2019

"The Poetics and Politics of Translation: The Bullfight in Shamloo, Bacon and Lorca"
Iranian Studies, UC Irvine, 2018

Select Papers
“Emancipatory Transitions in Kurdistan and The Prospect of a Radical Democratic Future”
Historical Materialism: The Great Transition, UQAM, 2018

“Technic and Realpolitik”
Anomalies, Aberrations, and Open Futures: Practicing Intellectual Resistance, GCAS, 2017

“The Unpredictable Trump”
Around the World, University of Alberta, 2017

“The Coffins: Sensory Deprivation and Surviving Prison in Iran”
Survival, The 25th Annual International Comparative Literature Conference, U of T, 2015

“To Aletheia Belongs the East and The West: Pamuk, Van Gogh, Heidegger, and the Truth of Art”
Repetition: with a Difference, U of T, 2014

 

Select Awards and Grants

Dean’s Humanities Fellowship, UC Irvine, 2019-20 

CGS Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2015-19 

The Jordan Center for Iranian Studies Research Grant, UC Irvine, 2016 

Student of the Year Award for Academic Excellence, English Department, TMU, 2013

 

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Refereed Articles
“Toward a Realpolitik of the Left: Toward a Realpolitik of the Left: Reworking Capital’s Strategic Cultures in Revolutionary Strategy, Marxist Philosophy, and Socialist Transitions from Capitalism” (under review)

“Toward a Folklore of the Left: Retracting the Strategic Models of Fiction from English Realism to Streaming Television” (under review)

Refereed Short Articles
“Farewell, Rojava: The Case for Strategic Thinking as a Democratic Necessity” in Philosophy World Democracy, 2022

Refereed Encyclopedic Entries
“Carl T. Dreyer” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, 2015

“Andrei Tarkovsky” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, 2015

“Kenneth Anger” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, 2015

“Stanley Kubrick” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, 2015

“Elia Kazan” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, 2015

 

Journalistic Experience & Publications

Editorial Work

Former English Editor at The Rojava Strategy

Select Articles
“The Authoritarian Turn of Global Capital & Its Contradictions in the USA” in Socialist Project, 2021

“A Mutating Neoliberalism, Socialist Transitions & Their Foreign Policies” in Hampton Institute, 2020

“Rojava After Rojava” in ROAR, 2020

“Rojava is Under Existential Threat” in Jacobin, 2019

“Iran Protests: A Third Path to Political Change” in Socialist Project, 2018

 

Organising and Activism Experience

Select Organising Work
Union Organiser, Trainer and Recruiter, UAW Local 2865, UC Irvine, 2018-2019

Select Human Rights Work
Researcher at The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, 2013-14

Select Coauthored Human Rights Reports
“Best Defense Practices for LGBT Defendants in Iranian Courts” in Legal Practice Manual for IGLHRC, 2015

“Iranian Queer Watch: Annual Report on the Violation of Queer Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran” in Annual Report for Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees, 2014