Email: fa1944@hunter.cuny.edu
Office: Room 522 Hunter North
Phone: 212-772-4246
Spring 2025 Office Hours: Mondays 4:30-6:00 PM
Education
Ph.D., Anthropology — University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D., Ethnomusicology — University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., Anthropology — University of British Columbia
M.A., Musicology — University of British Columbia
B.A. — University of Toronto
Professor Farzad Amoozegar is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist whose research lies at the intersection of Islamic philosophy, ethics, the anthropology of death and dying and sound studies. His work examines how theologically grounded moral frameworks shape experiences of death, disability, grief and
political violence. He is particularly interested in how disabled veterans interpret, narrate, and
contest these ethical perspectives, and in how wounded bodies become sites of ethical reflection
and political critique.
Professor Amoozegar’s first monograph, Being with the Dead (under review at Cambridge University Press), is an ethnographic study of five Iranian paraplegic veterans who sustain ongoing relationships with their deceased childhood friends through Qurʾanic recitation, whispered prayers, and Persian poetry. The book examines grief as an encounter between the living and the dead, the sonic dimensions of memory, and the ambivalent presence of the dead as both a source of solace and a site of enduring sorrow.
He is currently working on his second book, Bodies of Sacrifice, Voices of Reckoning, which examines how Iranian veterans redeploy the state’s own theological language—of sacrifice, martyrdom, and justice—as a critical repertoire through which to challenge the authorities. Through what he describes as a “grounded political theology,” their immobilized bodies become sites of moral contestation, exposing the fracture between revolutionary ideals, systemic neglect and political violence.
His articles have appeared in Ethos, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Anthropological Quarterly, Current Anthropology, and Anthropology and Humanism.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1989-0085
