Dr. Fatemeh Shams is Assistant Professor of Modern Persian literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her Ph.D in Oriental Studies from University of Oxford, Wadham College. Before joining Penn, she taught Persian language and literature at the University of Oxford, University of SOAS, and The Courtauld Institute of Art in United Kingdom. Her fields of interest include the social history of modern Persian literature, classical and modern prose, literary institutions and their role in the literary production under authoritarian states, ideology, censorship, and official literature in modern Iran. As well as publishing numerous articles, she is also an award-winning poet and has published three collections of her poetry.