Middle East Studies
Samine Tabatabaei

Samine Tabatabaei

Visiting Assistant Professor in Iranian Studies

Department: Middle East Studies

Office: 280 Brook St., Room 313

samine_tabatabaei@brown.edu

Samine Tabatabaei is an art historian who studies modern and contemporary art of the Middle East and its diasporas at the intersection of media theory, the social life of art and contemporary technologies. She is currently working on two manuscripts: The first, tentatively titled ‘Traction of Time,’ is based on her doctoral dissertation, which, through analyses of curatorial practices and the production of exhibitions of contemporary Iranian art, proposes a theory that is coterminous with trans-local(e) modalities of exchange. The second is attuned to the materiality of oil and its imaginary presence in Iranian experience; it is the first art historical inquiry into this topic. Of particular interest are the canonical experience of the 1953 coup d’état against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and the attendant expressions of oil, anti-colonialism, and Iranian-ness in the works of a generation of Iranian artists. At Brown, Dr. Tabatabaei teaches thematic courses on the history of media, contemporary technologies and creative life in Tehran.