Narges Erami
Professor Erami primarily works on the relationship between economy and religion and how it is played out in rituals of everyday life. Her work is centered in the Holy city of Qum in Iran. Her past research was a historical and ethnographic study of carpet merchants and the process of self-fashioning through the acquisition of specialized knowledge. Her current research continues to be focused in Qum, examining the cultural production of authority and knowledge through publications of Islamic texts and their global circulation. She is especially interested in the anthropology of the senses as it relates to subjecthood. Her courses will include the anthropology of the Middle East in general and Iran specifically; the ‘economic subject’; the anthropology of religion; field methods; and the politics of legitimacy and representation.
Ph.D. Columbia University, 2009
“Of Looms and Ladders: Moving Through Benjamin’s Storyteller,” Anthropological Theory March 2015 15 (1): 92-105.
“When Ties Don’t Bind: Smuggling Effects, Bazaars and Regulatory Regimes in Postrevolutionary Iran,” with Arang Keshavarzian Economy and Society Economy and Society January 2015 44(1): 110-139.
The Soul of the Market: Knowledge, Authority and the Making of Expert Merchants in the Persian Rug Bazar. New York: Columbia University, 2009.