Shahrokh Meskoob Archive and Publication of Edited Volume

In October of 2020, Stanford Libraries and the Hamid and the Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies held a one day conference and published an online digital exhibit focused on the Iranian writer and intellectual, Shahrokh Meskoob (1924-2005). 

I am pleased to announce the recent publication of A Scholar For Our Times: The Life and Work of Shahrokh Meskoob, edited by Abbas Milani and C. Ryan Perkins. With essays by the conference participants and more than 75 scanned images of Meskoob's handwritten notes and personal correspondence, this collection underscores the important role of the library in digitizing archival collections, publishing them online, and making them available to researchers.

As a leftist activist Meskoob was imprisoned in Iran in the 1950s and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 was forced into exile. He spent most of the remaining years of his life in Paris conducting research, writing, and teaching. In 2018 Dr. Abbas Milani (Director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford) informed me there was a possibility Stanford Libraries could acquire Meskoob’s archive. Such transfers of archival material across continents are rarely quick and only when we received the materials over a year later did we realize what a treasure they were. Chronicling the career and personal life of one of the most prominent Iranian intellectuals, Meskoob’s archive contains personal love letters, book drafts, notes, teaching materials and other unique materials that shed light on the ways in which he navigated tremendous upheavals in Iran and explored Iranian national and cultural identity.  

The digitized papers from Meskoob's collection can be accessed here.