Behrooz biography

Maziar Behrooz (M.Arch '85), founder of MB Architecture and member of the TuSA Dean's Advisory Council, is the recipient of this year's Inaugural Angela O'Byrne Alumni Award. The award is presented to an alumni coming from a diverse background who demonstrates incredible leadership in the architecture field.

The inaugural Angela O’Byrne Alumni Award was presented over the weekend at the 2022 Tulane School of Architecture Commencement to alumnus and award-winning architect Maziar Behrooz (A ‘85 and Dean’s Advisory Council member). The award recognizes a Tulane graduate coming from a diverse background or community who has become a leader in the architecture field.

Behrooz, an Iranian native who came to the U.S. to pursue his education, is celebrated for his remarkable efforts in sustainable architecture. His innovative designs demonstrate a commitment to maintaining an integrated environment through mindful building. Since 1996, Behrooz has led his firm, MB Architecture based in East Hampton, NY, in implementing these ideas in their designs.  

Behrooz was surrounded by architectural elements from an early age. With his mother working in fashion design, and his father as an engineer, Behrooz quickly became familiar with construction and design principles. In his education, he naturally gravitated toward geometric shapes and found particular interest in spatial compositions. He moved away from his home and family in Iran to attend high school in Massachusetts, where he first began to seriously consider the architecture field. Upon applying to colleges, the Tulane architecture program seemed intriguing, though he did not know anything about New Orleans aside from a general knowledge of its vibrant culture. As he would many more times in his career, Behrooz took a leap of faith and chose Tulane to begin his undergraduate studies.  

While earning his Bachelor of Architecture at Tulane, Behrooz gained foundational principles

Iranian cinema, theatre and puppetry director, professor-scholar, writer, translator, and master of puppetry. Besides his talent in writing and directing for cinema, theatre and puppet theatre, Behrooz Gharibpour is one of the most powerful cultural managers in Iran. He distinguished himself by inviting traditional puppeteers of kheimeh shab bazi to Tehran University when he was still a student there in 1970-1973, a useful acknowledgement for the traditional art. In 1973, he became an educator of children’s theatre and was the first actor in the puppet troupe directed by Oscar Batek, the Czech master who helped establish a Bachelor’s degree programme in Puppet Theatre at Tehran University. This experience led Gharibpour into a career of professional directing and development of puppet theatre in his country. He went to Italy to study at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome. But with the onset of the revolution, he returned to Iran in 1979.

As a writer and director, Behrooz Gharibpour was very active in television and with the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA, in Persian: Kanoon-e Parvaresh-e Fekri-e Koodakan va Nojavanan). With the success of plays such as Kouroghlooye Chenli Bel and Kachal Kaftarbaz (The Bald Pigeon Keeper), the basis of a permanent theatre was established with Gharibpour as director from 1981 to 1990. His production, Green in Green (1984), was performed as shadow theatre and his Grandfather and the Radish (1985) used rod puppets.

In 1991, Gharibpour established the Bahman Cultural Center, transforming a former slaughterhouse into one of the most active cultural sites for artists’ activities. He repeated this transformation for other spaces, including, in 1999, converting the Iran Shahr Military Garrison into the Iranian Artists’ Forum (IRF), which he managed for eight years.

His puppet operas, performed with his company, Aran Puppet Theater Group,

American historian (born 1959)

Maziar Behrooz (Persian: مازیار بهروز; born 1959) is an Iranian-born American historian of modern Iran, and educator. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Biography

Maziar Behrooz was born in 1959, in Tehran, to Sara Khosrovi-Azarbaijani and Jahangir (Changiz) Behrouz. He received his high school diploma from the United Kingdom.

Behrooz received his B.A degree in History-Political Science from Saint Mary's College of California (1982), his M.A. degree in Modern History of Europe from San Francisco State University (1986), and his PH.D. in Modern History of the Near East from University of California, Los Angeles (1993).

He has taught at a number of universities and colleges including the University of California, Berkeley; Saint Mary's College of California; Stanford University; Bridgewater State College; and is currently professor at the History Department of San Francisco State University where he teaches various courses concerning the modern history of the Middle East.

He has authored numerous articles and book chapters on Iran and is the author of two books on the history of the left movement in Iran. His first book is Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (I.B. Tauris and Co., 1994), which was based on his doctoral research. According to WorldCat, the book is held in 249 libraries and has been translated into Persian (2001) and Turkish (2006). One of his recent research project is about late-18th century to early 19th-century encounters between Persia and the Western world.

In 2023, San Francisco State University launched an investigation after a student complained that Behrooz had showed a depiction of Muhammad while teaching a class on the history of the Islamic world; the investigation was strongly criticized by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression as an "unacceptable — and unconstitutional" violatio

Iranian historian and sociologist

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi (Persian: بهروز قمری تبریزی; born 28 June 1960) is an Iranian-born American historian, sociologist, and professor. He is known for his works on the Iranian revolution and its aftermath. Ghamari-Tabrizi serves as the Professor of Near Eastern Studies, and as the Director of the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University.

Career

Ghamari-Tabrizi received a PhD in 1998 from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

He joined Princeton University in February 2019. Previously he was professor of history and sociology and the Director of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He was awarded a Beckman Fellowship in 2008.

Publications

See also

References