Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth Golnar Nikpour was awarded the 2026 Saidi-Sirjani Book Award from the Association for Iranian Studies for her recent book, Incarcerated Modern: Prisons and Public Life in Iran (Stanford, 2024) on behalf of the Persian Heritage Foundation.
The Saidi-Sirjani Book Award is granted biennially by the Association for Iranian Studies on behalf of the Persian Heritage Foundation. Established in 1995, the purpose of the Award is to recognize and promote scholarship in the field of Iranian studies, as well as to honor the memory of Ali-Akbar Saidi-Sirjani (1931-1994), the noted Iranian historian, literary critic, and author, in appreciation for his scholarship, his courage, and his indefatigable struggle for freedom of expression. Qualifying works consist of original studies or syntheses in the field of Iranian studies, which employ critical editions of historical texts, use translations from an Iranian language, and are accompanied by scholarly annotations and extensive research.
"The Incarcerated Modern" addresses the history of imprisonment and incarceration in Iran, and how it is intertwined with threads of carceral infrastructures traversing the globe from the late nineteenth century to today. In her work, Nikpour discusses the transnational solidarity and opposition movements that developed against carceral institutions and practices in Iran and around the globe, and argues that the history of incarceration is inseparable from what it means to simply be a citizen in Iran. The book converses on how crucial it is to not only take into consideration the stories of "political" prisoners, but to recognize that all prisoners are inherently political.
Associate Professor Golnar Nikpour is a scholar of modern Iranian political and intellectual history, with a particular interest in the history of law, incarceration, revolution, and rights. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, & African Studies. At Dartmouth, she teaches on an interdisciplinary set of topics including modern Middle Eastern and North African history, Iranian history, political theory, Islamic studies, critical prison studies, colonialism and decolonization, and women and gender studies. The Incarcerated Modern (Stanford University Press) is her first monograph. Nikpour is also co-founder and co-editor of B|ta'arof, a journal for Iranian arts and writing, where she has written extensively on the intellectual and cultural histories of Iran and its diaspora.
