Heroes to Hostages: America and Iran in a Troubled Middle East

What went awry with Iran and America? Based on Dr. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet's book, "Heroes to Hostages: America and Iran, 1800-1988", this lecture pays attention to Iran’s Third World networks as it navigated the Cold War. It focuses attention on race relations and gender concerns in its coverage of diplomacy and reexamines the causes of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
This lecture was organized on February 8, 2024.
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kashani-Sabet received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead Scholar. She completed her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history at Yale University. Dr. Kashani-Sabet directed the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania as a National Resource Center from 2006-2019. In 2006, she launched the Modern Middle Eastern Studies (MMES) undergraduate program and served as advisor to the major and minor program until 2019.