Contact Information
Biography
Aria’s classroom is a space of laughter and reflection, where students embrace the sociability of humanistic education to cultivate genuine hope (with minimal reliance on edibles outside of class). He honors the loving memory of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, whose courage and moral clarity profoundly transformed the UW community. Aria has helped establish a lecture series at the Middle East Center to carry forward her name and memory—for Ayşenur no se murió, sino se multiplicó.
Aria's research and teaching focus on modern Persian literature and translation studies. His first book, Reading across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism, the winner of the ACLA’s 2025 René Wellek Prize for the Best Monograph in Comparative Literature, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2024. The book details the dynamic and interconnected ways Afghans and Iranians invented their modern selves through new ideas about literature (adabiyāt). Reading across Borders is available in both Iran (through a Persian translation published by Shirazeh Press) and India (Sanctum Books, New Delhi).
Aria is also a (very timid) practitioner of literary translation. Shape of Extinction, his co-translations of the modernist poet Bijan Jalali (d. 1999), done with Adeeba Shahid Talukder, has been published by the Toronto-based independent publisher, Asemana Books (May 2025). In AY 2025-26, Aria will direct the Middle East Center at JSIS. He will also continue co-convening the Translation Studies Hub with the objective of establishing a minor and an advanced certificate in translation studies at the University of Washington.
Since 2017, Aria has been engaging in social advocacy for non-citizen Americans, particularly Central American asylum seekers, which richly nourishes both his teaching and research. Outside of his areas of research, he enjoys reading about Latin America through its own literary and journalistic voices.
Teaching (2025/26):
Research
Selected Research
- Shape of Extinction: Poems by Bijan Jalali. Translated by Adeeba Shahid Talukder and Aria Fani. Toronto: Asemana Books, 2025.
- آریا فانی، خواندن فراسوی مرزها: افغان ها، ایرانی ها و ملی گرایی ادبی، ترجمه علی قاسمی منفرد، نشر شیرازه
- Aria Fani, Kevin L. Schwartz, Samuel Hodgkin, "Pathways to Persotopias," PMLA 139.9 (2024): 299-306. Download PDF
- Aria Fani, Reading across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2024.
- The Shadow Texts of National History: Poetic Participation in Iran and Afghanistan, Philological Encounters Download PDF
- Aria Fani, “What Does Translation Mean in the Age of Colonial Modernity?” In The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation, edited by Michelle Quay, Patricia Higgins, and Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi (2022), pp. 286-298. Download PDF
- Aria Fani and Schwartz, KL. Persianate Pasts; National Presents: Persian Literary and Cultural Production in the Twentieth Century (Special issue), Iranian Studies 55.3 (2022): 603-790. Download PDF
- “What Is Literature? The Rise of a Global Literary Discourse” (Mandarin Chinese title: 文学是什么?一种全球性文学话语的兴起), Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures (2021): 42-49. Download PDF
- Aria Fani, "The Allure of Untranslatability: Shafi'i-Kadkani and (Not) Translating Persian Poetry.” Iranian Studies, 54.1-2 (2021): 95-125. Download PDF
- Aria Fani, "Iran’s Literary Becoming: Zokaʾ ol-Molk Forughi and the Literary History That Wasn’t," Iran Namag 5.3 (2020), pp. 114-144. Download PDF
- Aria Fani, "What Is Asylum? Translation, Trauma, and Institutional Visibility.” In Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism. Edited by Rebecca Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian, Routledge, 2020, pp. 397-407. Download PDF
- Aria Fani and John L. Hayes, "Basmala: Translating an Iconic Phrase.” TRANS: Revista de Traductología, 21, 2017, pp. 213-219 Download PDF
- Aria Fani, "A Silent Conversation with Literary History: Re- theorizing Modernism in the Poetry of Bizhan Jalāli," Iranian Studies, 50:4, 2017, pp. 523-552, Download PDF
- Aria Fani, “Poet as Citizen in a Contested Nation: Rewriting the Poetry of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.” In Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis. Edited by David J. Elliott, Marissa Silverman, Wayne Bowman, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 392-414.
- Aria Fani, “Narratives of Literary Commitment in the Poetry of Afghan Resistance: The Cases of Khalilollah Khalili and Parwin Pazhwâk,” Iran Nameh, 29:1, 2014, pp. 108-120 Download PDF