I belong to that generation of American scholars in Iranian studies whose specialized graduate work began after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Although my dissertation, which focused on an aspect of Timurid art, was accomplished without direct access to research materials and collections in Iran, without first hand and research experience there remained a significant gap in my knowledge of Iranian art and architecture. Therefore, once American travel to Iran became permissible by 1996-97, I availed myself of the opportunity. I have been visiting Iran almost annually or semi-annually ever since. As in many parts of the world, in Iran scholarly access to historical museum and library collections is based on who you are and who you know. Even then, it often takes multiple visits (sometimes over several years) or the intervention of a higher authority to gain access to some collections. This problem may be compounded by the fact that certain institutions are closed to the public and/or researchers, often inexplicably, and for an indeterminate amount of time. Access to storage is also an issue as is the de-installation for study purposes of works of art on exhibition. Most of these issues have to do with limited staff and lack of institutional experience in dealing with researchers (Iranian scholars and especially graduate students often have little to no access to state art collections). Lastly, very few collections are well-cataloged or published or available on an institutional website, while some collections have been redistributed or relocated since publication; museum and library curators and collection managers are often only reachable through personal email accounts and mobiles. This presentation will focus on research opportunities for art historians at Iranian museums and libraries. It will consider resources, accessibility, building a network of institutional and collegial assets, and advice for navigating bureaucratic complexities.

As a participant of this roundtable, I will describe my strategies and experiences conducting archival and ethnographic research in Iran as a French-American doctoral student at Princeton University between 2009 and 2011. During this period, I visited Iran three times – each three to four months in duration – to study Persian at the Dehkhoda Institute and to research the Iranian development organization, Construction Jihad (CJ), the subject of my doctoral dissertation and book manuscript. To access the country, I obtained a student visa from Dehkhoda through the Iranian embassy in Paris and enrolled in classes at the Institute with assistance from my Persian language professor at Princeton. I applied for the visa several months in advance to give Dehkhoda and the Iranian Foreign Ministry adequate time to approve and process it. In Iran, Dehkhoda arranged for my accommodation in dormitories for foreign students at the Universities of Tehran and Shahid Beheshti. At Dehkhoda, I was required to consistently attend class and periodically meet with officials to discuss my background, studies, and research. Before I first arrived in Iran, American professors, who specialized in the country’s history and politics, introduced me to a professor at Tehran University. This professor served as my unofficial adviser and connected me to faculty, students, and other contacts at his university and other institutions inside and outside of Tehran. With official letters from Princeton and Dehkhoda vouching that I was a foreign student and researcher, I accessed the National Library and Archives, the Parliamentary Library, and the Ministry of Agriculture with which CJ merged in 2001. At these libraries and archives, I photocopied books, articles, and documents that I took back to the United States in a suitcase, which was nearly confiscated by American customs officials. A librarian at the National Library and my adviser at Tehran University initially put me in touch with former CJ members, whom I interviewed and who referred me to their friends, colleagues, and associates. Through this snowball sampling, I interviewed over one hundred former members, development experts, and service recipients in Tehran and several provinces around the country. At the end of my third and last visit, I was detained for several hours by Iranian authorities before being released and returning to the United States.

As a senior scholar in the field of pre-Islamic art and archaeology, I have been traveling to Iran since graduate school (late 1960s-early 1970s) and as recently as 2011 for research, excavation, conference participation, and lecture to American tour groups; from January 1976-February 1979 (sometime after Ayatollah Khomeinei's return) I taught at a graduate division of the university in Shiraz and curated a photographic archive there. Since the Revolution I have been back to Iran four times, twice as a tour lecturer, once at the invitation of the National Museum to work on a collection, and the fourth, and most recent, as an organizer and participant in a Silk Road conference. I have recently been invited (not requested by me)to attend the archaeological conference, held annually in March in Tehran, and I am currently seeking an invitation for April to discuss an archival project that I and a Japanese colleague wish to initiate. I plan to speak about my various experiences and strategies over the years and hope to be able to report on my (successful) attempt--the actual visit--to establish the archival project.

As a French citizen specializing on classical Persian literature, I was able to travel to Iran on a regular basis when I was a student of Persian in Paris, and beyond, to carry out research in various academic institutions in Tehran. Between 1997 and 2006, I visited Iran several times, often for a month-long stay in the course of the summer, on different types of visa. In 1997, I was a student at the summer language program of Shahid Beheshti University. In the year 2002-2003, I spend nine months in Iran to carry out research for my doctoral dissertation and audit literature courses at ‘Allâme Tabâtabâ’i University. A letter of invitation from the University was required to obtain the long-term visa. My research focused on 13th century treatises on poetics, and most of the sources I needed to access were kept at the University of Tehran library in the form of manuscripts and microforms. It took over a week to procure the letters of introduction and stamps necessary to gain admittance to the Department of manuscripts. It is owing to the joint support of my doctoral advisor in Paris, of my host at ‘Allâme Tabâtabâ’i University and of the French Research Institute in Iran (IFRI) that I was granted access to the resources. In this roundtable, I will document my diverse experience and strategies as a student and a researcher in Iran over the years.

As a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies, in the field of Islamic Studies, my dissertation examines visual culture (e.g., figurative religious images, such as those of the Prophet Muhammad and his family) and materiality (e.g., physical objects used in ritual practice) in order to observe how images, art, and their associated texts do play an important role in Muslim devotional practices. My research focuses specifically on images, objects, and texts within the context of contemporary Shi’a Muslim practices in Iran. As I developed my research project, I knew that the difficulties of traveling to Iran meant I needed to be flexible in how I approached what I could accomplish as an American with only one passport. I considered a backup plan of working in Turkey, a place I have also done a great amount of research, but hoped for the best—that I would receive access to materials for my study in Iran. In 2014, after receiving news of receiving a generous grant to travel to Turkey and Iran for my research, I immediately set out to contact anyone I knew in Iran, including friends, colleagues, and even distant associates to see how I could get an invitation to travel to Iran for my research. My network mobilized in order to match me with various universities and research groups. In the end, I received a last minute visa invitation once I had already arrived in Turkey, and I flew to Iran for my research. Primarily I worked in Mashhad, Tehran, and Qom, while also having the chance to travel on my own in Shiraz and Esfahan. I had a positive experience as the universities I worked with were eager to have me there and provided me with abundant resources in gathering my research materials. I had more “freedom” than many students and scholars I know who have travelled to Iran, and I was able to accomplish a lot on this account. My participation in this roundtable will document my research project and visa application process, granting agencies that supported my work, and how I navigated five different universities, many research centers, and countless shrines and religious spaces during my research trip.