Newsletter: July 14, 2022 (#21)

Persepolis Unbound: Dispatches & Ephemera

Jul 14

Welcome to my newsletter and blog: Persepolis Unbound. My name is Keanu Heydari. I’m a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I study the Iranian diaspora in France in the twentieth century. I’m also interested in New Testament studies and modern theology. Learn more about my vision for this project below:

Keanu Heydari

On "Persepolis Unbound"

This new venture is titled Persepolis Unbound, with an eye toward Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. The tyranny of Jupiter is here eclipsed by what I’m calling my “affective exile.” Protesting against the discourse of authenticity (so common in late twentieth-century Iranian intellectual production) I want to bring to light the vagaries of my experience as …

3 months ago · Keanu Heydari

If you’re receiving this via email, you’ve either subscribed to my Substack directly or were a subscriber to my newsletter, Dispatches & Ephemera, through Revue. I’ve moved both my website’s blog and my newsletter to Substack. If you’re reading this online, welcome! If you find my content worthwhile, I encourage you to consider subscribing.

Research updates

With this twenty-first newsletter, I’m now working through the medium of Substack (again). How do you think things look? If you have any feedback regarding the layout of these newsletters, please let me know!

Last week I wrote about my paper presentation at the Modern Travel, Modern Landscapes conference in Durham. This week, I’ve spent time finishing up work on a handful of side projects and taking care of bureaucratic necessities to make sure this coming academic year goes off without a hitch. I head back to Ann Arbor toward the end of August 2022.

While in Los Angeles, I’m getting some much needed rest while I try to stay on top of my other obligations. In my non-work related reading, I’ve been researching more about productivity and information management. The buzz generated by Sönke Ahrens’ second edition release of How to Take Smart Notes as well as Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain inspired this renewed interest.

Below, you can find three articles about this topic (now easily available in my Substack).

Keanu Heydari

Workflows

I am sitting at my desk in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Some allege that summer has begun, but I’ve paid no mind to whispers that threaten the threads of tenacity remaining in my psyche to finish seminar papers, take language courses, do research, and prepare for the third year of a Ph.D. program in history at the University of …

2 years ago · Keanu Heydari

Keanu Heydari

Workflows: "Welcome" to Graduate School

The Problem of Information Management Introduction Perhaps I made a mistake not getting a Master's degree before I applied for Ph.D. programs in history. Perhaps I made a mistake in not taking substantial time off after I got my Bachelor's degree. Perhaps, even, I should have considered more lucrative career options — in translation work, public relations…

2 years ago · Keanu Heydari

Keanu Heydari

Workflows: Research Practices & Digital Infrastructure

Resurrecting the Series In May 2020, I published "Workflows" on my blog. In July of that year, I published a sequel—meant to be one in a series of posts about research productivity—entitled "'Welcome' to Graduate School." Unfortunately, the Workflows…