I have extensive teaching experience and have taught at all levels of education at the Department of History, from the first-semester introductory course in history to doctoral supervision and doctoral courses. I am currently the overall course coordinator and seminar leader for History IV, a advanced-level course in history for teachers.

I received my PhD in 2002 with a dissertation on urban planning in Stockholm during the second half of the nineteenth century. The dissertation viewed modern urban planning as an expression of modernity, understood as a critical stance toward social reality. The increasing dominance of a disciplining discourse (in Foucauldian terms) in Stockholm’s urban planning around the turn of the twentieth century appeared as an example of how modernity departed from the promises with which it had originally been associated.

After the defence of my dissertation, I continued to be interested in the discursive contexts of historical practices and, among other things, discussed the (absence of) discursive frameworks for environmental issues within Stockholm municipal politics in the early twentieth century. However, my interest in the complex of problems associated with the failure of modernity led me further, and I became interested in the power relations associated with the orientalist discourse. The concrete expression of this orientation was a research interest concerned with intellectual problematizations of the orientalist discourse in Iran, before and after the revolution of 1978–1979. With my background in Iran and having grown up during the Iranian revolution, I could not avoid identifying (inverted) orientalist features in the new (Islamic) state that emerged from the revolution. The post-revolutionary regime redefined the country’s national interests by portraying “the West” as the root of evil and then confronting it—that is, the United States and its allies in the Middle East, as well as those groups in Iran that were presented as allies of “the West.” This has given rise in Iran to intellectual debates that question the orientalist divisions of existence, which can no longer be taken for granted.

Some of these debates have problematized the discursive frameworks within which modernity found its way into Iranian contexts in the early nineteenth century. The failure of modernity is explained by the fact that modernity was adopted within conceptual frameworks that remained fundamentally traditional. The question that arises is whether there was any potential for critical thinking in the intellectual heritage of the golden age of Persian-Islamic culture between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. I have immersed myself in a now completed project on this heritage and commented on this question in a study of religious criticism in three medieval Persian poets, Sa‘di, ‘Obayd, and Hafez. In this study, I examine the three poets’ critical attitudes toward the dominant interpretations and applications of religion. Their criticism and understanding of religion display strong individualistic traits, which I interpret as indications of an early Iranian form of modernity—an alternative modernity.

I am now attempting, in a new project, to think beyond orientalism. This new project deals with an intellectual circle in Iran during the period 1979–2000. The circle consisted of a group of Muslim reformist thinkers who advocated a distinctive approach to the question of modernity. The aim of the Kiyān-circle was to unite what they perceived as moral values in Iranian Shi‘i Muslim culture with the critical thinking and critical rationality inherent in modernity. The loose networks that sustained this intellectual milieu took on more stable forms with the publication of the journal Kiyān in 1991, which was published until its closure in the autumn of 2000.

Intellectuals within the Kiyān circle were from the very outset convinced that the union of Islam, state power, and legislation in Iranian society—which, for better or worse, emerged from the Iranian Revolution of 1979—required reinterpretation. This perspective opened the Kiyān circle to recognizing the need for democracy as a prerequisite for the open intellectual dialogue that, in their view, would unite morality with modernity. The philosophers, writers, academics, lawyers, journalists, and religious jurists associated with Kiyān therefore became involved at an early stage in the practical, political, and ideological organization of movements demanding expanded civil rights, which during the 1990s and 2000s coalesced into broad social movements.

Intellectuals within the Kiyān circle were from the outset convinced that the combination of Islam, state power, and legislation in the Iranian society that—both positively and negatively—emerged from the 1979 revolution required reinterpretation. This perspective made the Kiyān circle receptive to the insight that democracy was necessary as a condition for the open intellectual dialogue that, in their view, could unite morality with modernity. The philosophers, writers, academics, lawyers, journalists, and religious jurists associated with Kiyān consequently became involved early on in the practical, political, and ideological organization of movements demanding expanded civil rights, which during the 1990s and 2000s were brought together in broad social movements.

These demands for reinterpretation gained increased traction during the 1990s, when a number of reformist factions within the political and religious establishment responded to the emerging democratic movements. Reinterpretations of Islamic dogmas appeared as a possible way out of the legitimacy crisis that had affected the state formation, and journalists and writers with an original connection to Kiyān came to occupy central positions within the democratic movements. The reform efforts ultimately failed, however, and during the 2000s the window of political opportunity closed. The closure of Kiyān, together with the shutting down of up to thirty other journals and newspapers in 2000, constituted a clear expression of this failure.

My study analyzes how the Kiyān circle’s conceptualizations of rationality, modernity, and democracy changed through their interaction with the democratic movements during the 1990s and 2000s.

Books:

Sheiban, Hossein (2026), "All in Theft and Black Deeds – With ‘Obayd We Align": ‘Obayd Zākānī, A Humorist Critic of Religion, Runica et Midævalia: Stockholm.

Sheiban, Hossein (2014), Den sargade dygden. Religionskritik hos tre klassiska persiska poeter: Sa‘di, ‘Obayd och Hafez [The Wounded Virtue: Criticism of Religion in Three Classical Persian Poets: Sa‘di, ‘Obayd and Hafez], Ellerströms Förlag: Lund.

Sheiban, Hossein (2002), Den ekonomiska staden. Stadsplanering i Stockholm under den senare hälften av 1800-talet [The Economic City: Urban planning in Stockholm during the Second Nalf of the Nineteenth Century], Akiv Förlag: Lund.

Selected journal articles and book chapters:

Bitarafan, Mohammad, Sohrab Yazdani & Hossein Sheiban (2019), ”Controversy over the concept ‘freedom’ during the Iranian constitutional revolution (1906– 09)”, in: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol 46, issue 1, s. 1–13.

Sheiban, Hossein (2016), ”Kritiskt tänkande på andra villkor: Poeten Hāfez i medeltidens Persien” [A Different Kind of Critical Thinking: The Poet Hāfez in Medieval Persia], in: Sandén, Annika & Elisabeth Elgán (ed:s), Kunskapens tider: Historiska perspektiv på kunskapssamhället [Times of Knowledge: Historical Perspectives on the Knowledge Society], Stockholm University Press: Stockholm, s. 128–156.

Sheiban, Hossein (2014), "Torkestân och Forghâna, vatten och lera, själ och hjärta" [Torkestân and Forghâna, Water and Clay, Soul and Heart], in: Gerö, Eva-Carin & Hans-Roland Johansson (red.), Periferi och centrum: Texter om marginalisering i förmodern tid [Periphery and Centre: Texts on Marginalization in the Premodern World], Nordic Academic Press: Lund.

Sheiban, Hossein (2014), ”Integration och splittring” [Integration and Division], in: Sjöberg, Maria (red), En samtidig världshistoria [A Contemporary World History], Studentlitteratur: Lund 2014.

Sheiban, Hossein (2010), ”The 1902 Stockholm smoke question”, in: Lilja, Sven & Mattias Legnér (ed:s), The Living City. Approaches to Urban Environmental History, Formas: Stockholm.