What role should classical Persian literature play in advanced language teaching and learning? The current climate seems hardly appropriate for arguing that medieval texts, canonical or otherwise, should dominate our advanced curricula as it did in decades prior. For one, universities across the U.S. continue to reduce or drop altogether their foreign language requirements, a perhaps misguided step towards a fully commodified model of education wherein students become “customers” and classes become “products” whose consumption will transfer directly to students’ post-baccalaureate employment. Furthermore, recent developments in language acquisition theories have transformed the field itself so that the communicative approach that dominated pedagogical discourse around the turn of the 21st century has given way to post-communicative thinking in general and curricular design grounded in Content-Based Language Teaching (CBLT) and Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) in particular. Indeed, as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL) has defined and continues to refine national standards for foreign language learning and developed proficiency guidelines that inform our means and methods of assessment, Persian instructors, as with any other language, might reasonably assume that medieval texts no longer offer the most practical or efficient materials around which to design advanced language courses. However, this paper argues that we can and should continue to keep classical Persian literature in our advanced curricula and can do so in a manner that both responds productively to the changing nature of higher education in the U.S. and remains informed by the latest and most advanced theories and standards of language competency. Combining data from practical experiences in teaching and curriculum design and theoretical insights from Byrnes and Manchón’s recent work on TBLT (2014) and ACTFL’s standards and proficiency guidelines, this paper argues that we should still be teaching literature at the advanced level and offers some applicable strategies for how instructors can do so in a manner that remains effective and state-of-the-art.