You’re invited! Join the New Alexandria Foundation for a dialogue with Olga M. Davidson, Executive Editor of NAF’s Ilex Project. Olga will discuss her research on Ferdowsi and introduce the latest volume in Ilex’s Mizan Series: Iran Amplified: One Hundred Years of Music and Society in Iran.
What to Expect
This is not a formal lecture — it’s a guided conversation with plenty of time for your questions.
Iran Amplified
Iran Amplified presents a cross-genre collection of compelling scholarship, musician narratives, and primary sources. This volume traces the role music has played in mediating social and political life across the twentieth century and into the present. From the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022, music has played a pivotal role in how Iranians have expressed dissent, solidarity, grief, and hope. It also investigates central analytical vectors such as Islam, gender, media technology, alterity, transnational flows, and diasporic communities.
The volume was edited by Nahid Siamdoust and H. E. Chehabi, two leading readers of Iranian culture. Siamdoust is Assistant Professor of Media and Middle East Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Soundtrack of the Revolution. She has been a correspondent for Time Magazine and Al Jazeera International, and her commentary has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, BBC, and NPR. Chehabi is Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University, author of Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism and Onomastic Reforms, and editor or co-editor of a dozen volumes, most recently Unconquered States.
Meet Your Speaker
Olga M. Davidson, PhD, is a distinguished scholar of Persian and Arabic literature and a Research Fellow at Boston University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations. Her academic work focuses on the interplay between oral and written traditions in classical Persian poetics, specifically regarding the Shahnameh (the Persian “Book of Kings”). She is the author of foundational texts such as Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings and Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetics, and she serves as the Executive Editor of the Ilex Project (formerly the Ilex Foundation). A graduate of Princeton University, Dr. Davidson has previously held faculty and leadership positions at Brandeis University, Wellesley College, and Harvard University.
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Time: 12:00–1:00 p.m. ET
Location: Online via Zoom
Cost: Free
Recording: This session will be recorded and posted to our YouTube channel after the event.
Expect spirited discussion, big questions, and new insights!
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