Shareah Taleghani

We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of our colleague, Professor Rebecca Shareah Taleghani, of which we were made aware on September 22, 2023.

Professor Rebecca Shareah Taleghani received her BA in Anthropology from University of California at Berkeley in 1995, her MA in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from New York University in 2003 and her PhD in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from New York University in 2009. She taught at Queens College as a visiting assistant professor from spring 2013 to spring 2014 before joining the faculty of the Department of Classical, Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures in fall 2014. At Queens College she had taught Arabic language courses at all levels, courses on classical Islamic literatures and civilizations, Islam, modern Arabic literature, 1001 Nights in world literature and film, and the graphic novel in the Middle East and North Africa. She had also taught dissent and exile in the literature of the Middle East and North Africa at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Professor Taleghani was the author of Readings in Syrian Prison Literature: The Poetics of Human Rights (Syracuse University Press, 2021). Based on years of research, visits to the region, and interviews with many writers and ex-prisoners, this is a groundbreaking work. As the Los Angeles Review of Books commented, “Taleghani makes a powerful case that [it is] precisely by appealing to universal human experience that prison literature succeeds.” Professor Taleghani was also co-editor of Generations of Dissent: Intellectuals, Cultural Production and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (Syracuse University Press, 2020), and, along with her colleague Professor Ammiel Alcalay, co-editor of A Dove in Free Flight (2021), a collection of poems written in prison by poet and former Syrian political prisoner Faraj Baraykdar. In addition, Professor Taleghani was also the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Professor Taleghani had been a beloved teacher, colleague, and friend, with relationships spanning many countries and communities of writers, political prisoners, and activists. Her sudden death is a deep blow to all of us. Her loss will be keenly felt.