About Me

Biography

I grew up in Iran and moved to the U.S. for college, where I studied physics, worked at a space physics lab, and tutored mathematics at the University of Houston. After graduation I worked for NASA for six years both at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and The Jet Propulsion Laboratories. My husband loves to tell everyone that my name is on the International Space Station, which will probably stay in orbit for another few months. Perhaps the most memorable experience from that time in my life (not surprisingly, my first assignment at NASA) was writing code for the new Mission Control Center—code that has since been updated several times over. I say all this to point out that it seems as though none of what I did at NASA compares with the (hopefully) lasting cultural awareness a class about Islam and the Middle East generates. I currently live and teach in Middlebury, Vermont where I divide my time between College life and having fun with my two-year-old son, Sina.

While working at NASA, I also studied film theory and production under Professor Hamid Naficy at Rice University, the culmination of which was three, short documentary films shot in Iran. My film background comes in handy for my teaching, as I aspire to create lectures that are works of performance art.

I have lived in the Arab Middle East (Dubai, U.A.E. and Cairo, Egypt). I am a native speaker of Persian and English, and I have advanced-high proficiency in Arabic.