Foad Torshizi

Associate Professor
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black-and-white head shot of Foad Torshizi
MA, University of Minnesota
PHD, Columbia University

Foad Torshizi is an associate professor of Art of the Islamic World at RISD. He holds degrees in Comparative Literature and Society and Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (PhD and MPhil, Columbia University), Art History (MA, University of Minnesota) and Photography (MFA, Honar University of Tehran). Prior to joining the RISD faculty in 2017, he taught graduate students at Tehran University, advanced undergraduates and graduate students at the Università degli Studi di Milano in Italy as well as undergraduate students at Columbia University’s Core Curriculum.

Torshizi’s research interests are in the areas of global contemporary art, contemporary Iranian and Middle Eastern art, postcolonial theory, ethics of readership, theories of globalization and cosmopolitanism, comparative literature and politics of translation and interpretation. His research has been published in academic journals in both the US and Iran. Most recently, he published an article in Grey Room (MIT Press) titled “Loquacious Objects: Contemporary Iranian Art, Autotranslation, and the Readings of Benevolence.” Additionally, he has co-edited (with Joshua I. Cohen and Vazira Zamindar) a special issue of ARTMargins (MIT Press, June 2023) titled “Art History, Postcolonialism, and the Global Turn.”

Torshizi is currently completing a manuscript tentatively titled Unreadings: Contemporary Iranian Art and Art History’s Monolingualism. The manuscript examines the ways in which Western disciplinary forms, and more specifically art history and criticism, return home to circumscribe aesthetic diversity in Iran, demanding that the aesthetic economies of Iranian art align with Euro-American understandings of meaning, value, aspiration and desire.

Courses

Fall 2024 Courses

THAD H180-01 - INTRODUCTION TO IRANIAN CINEMA
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H180-01

INTRODUCTION TO IRANIAN CINEMA

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: T | 9:40 AM - 12:40 PM Instructor(s): Foad Torshizi Location(s): College Building, Room 442 Enrolled / Capacity: 25 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

From international film festivals to university campuses, from museums of modern art to neighborhood theaters, Iranian cinema has now emerged as the staple of a cultural currency that defies the logic of nativism and challenges the problems of globalization. Hamid Dabashi writes this in the introduction to his landmark study of Iranian cinema, Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future (Verso, 2001). This course introduces you to the history of Iranian cinema, from the Iranian New Wave (1960s) to the present. It examines the ways in it occupies an important place on the scene of global cinema while it defies the logic of nativism. We will watch some of the most prominent movies by acclaimed Iranian filmmakers Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Nasser Taghvai, Amir Naderi, Sohrab Shahid-Saless, Forough Farrokhzad, Jafar Panahi, Masoud Kimiai, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Bahram Beyzaie, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Marzieh Meshkini, Asghar Farhadi, Tahmineh Milani, Ebrahim Hatamikia, and Kamran Shirdel. We will also look at the works of diasporic artists, including Shirin Neshat, Marjane Satrapi, Ramin Bahrani, Mitra Farahani, Ana Lily Amirpour, and Granaz Moussavi.

Elective

THAD H229-01 - ART HISTORY, POSTCOLONIALISM, DECOLONIALITY
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H229-01

ART HISTORY, POSTCOLONIALISM, DECOLONIALITY

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: W | 8:00 AM - 11:00 AM Instructor(s): Foad Torshizi Location(s): Design Center, Room 211 Enrolled / Capacity: 15 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

In recent years, the idea of decolonizing museums, academic institutions of art, and the narrative and curricular spaces of art history has gained increased urgency. But the concept and practice of decolonization have a much longer history than their recent (re)emergence in the art world. As a response to colonial and imperial orders of the world, decolonization set new boundaries for thought, knowledge, and for “being” itself. This seminar asks whether these boundaries have been effectively translated into the recent challenges that are posed against institutional practices of art and art history. It also asks about the ways in which postcolonialism, with a genealogy different from decolonization, is situated vis-à-vis the historical origins of decolonization in the writings of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon and its resurgence in art history and museology. We will read texts by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Aníbal Quijano, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Audre Lorde, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Edward W. Said, Geeta Kapur, and Walter Mignolo among others.

Elective

Spring 2025 Courses

THAD H102-02 - CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H102-02

CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-02-13 to 2025-05-23
Times: TTH | 11:20 AM - 12:20 PM; T | 2:50 PM - 4:20 PM Instructor(s): Foad Torshizi Location(s): Auditorium, Room 132; College Building, Room 424 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Continuing from critical frameworks established in H101: Global Modernisms, the second semester of the introduction to art history turns to designed, built, and crafted objects and environments. The course does not present a conventional history of the modern movement, but rather engages with a broad range of materials, makers, traditions, sites, and periods in the history of architecture and design. Global in scope, spanning from the ancient world to the present, and organized thematically, the lectures explicitly challenge Western-modernist hierarchies and question myths of race, gender, labor, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. The course is intended to provide students with critical tools for interrogating the past as well as imagining possible futures for architecture and design. 
Required for graduation for all undergraduates. 
 
First year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division. Transfer and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the spring.


For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance.
 

Major Requirement | BFA

THAD H206-01 - ART AND THE NATION
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H206-01

ART AND THE NATION

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-02-13 to 2025-05-23
Times: W | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Foad Torshizi Location(s): Washington Place, Room 302 Enrolled / Capacity: 15 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Despite the prevalent self-congratulatory narrative espoused by art institutions in the metropolitan West, proclaiming the transcendence of national boundaries and heralding a prematurely celebrated cosmopolitan world, the enduring significance of “the nation” in contemporary art cannot be overlooked. The consistent reliance of curators, critics, and art historians on national backgrounds as crucial determinants in the curation and interpretation of artistic works suggests a reality far more complex than one might assume from the supposed cosmopolitan capability of art to cross national boundaries. Does contemporary art suggest that works can traverse national and linguistic borders without the need for translation? Is “the national” inherently opposed to “the global” and “the cosmopolitan,” or do these entities coexist? Must artists who engage with national themes necessarily eschew global perspectives? How can art be understood not merely as an expression of national identity but also as a force actively shaping the political and social agendas of nationalist and, at times, decolonial movements?

This seminar addresses these questions through the works of prominent scholars including Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Perry Anderson, Gloria Anzaldúa, Walter Mignolo, Neil Lazarus, Fredric Jameson, Kaya Ganguly, and Timothy Brennan, among others. Students should expect to read approximately 70-80 pages of dense readings per week, write four to eight weekly responses (depending on the grade they are aiming for), deliver an in-class presentation (either individually or in a group), and participate actively in class discussions. The course will employ labor-based grading.

Elective

Image
black-and-white head shot of Foad Torshizi
MA, University of Minnesota
PHD, Columbia University