Vanessa Martin
University of London
The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in 19th Century Persia
I.B. Tauris
Beatrice Forbes Manz
Tufts University
Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran
Cambridge University Press
Sa'ad Eskander
MESA awarded its 2007 Academic Freedom Award to Sa'ad Eskander. Dr. Eskander is the Director-General, Iraq National Library and Archive, where he has carried on a four-year struggle to defend and preserve the cultural heritage of all Iraq for all Iraqis.
Jessica Winegar
Temple University
Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt
Rudi Mathee
University of Delaware
The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900
Joan Wallach Scott and Akbar and Manuchehr Mohammadi
MESA awarded its 2006 Academic Freedom Award to Joan Wallach Scott and Akbar Mohammadi and Manuchehr Mohammadi. Scott received the award for her indispensable efforts as chair of the academic freedom committee of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Akbar Mohammadi and Manuchehr Mohammadi received the award for their leadership roles in the struggle of Iranian university students to achieve and uphold academic and intellectual freedom in Iran.
Gülru Necipoğlu
Harvard University
The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire
Princeton University Press, 2005
Saba Mahmood
University of California, Berkeley
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
Princeton University Press, 2005
Robert R. Bianchi
University of Chicago
Guests of God: Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World
Oxford University Press, 2004
Iranian Writer, Akbar Ganji
MESA awarded the 2005 Academic Freedom Award to Iranian writer Akbar Ganji, a major figure in promoting intellectual and political debate in the Islamic Republic over much of the past ten years and a man who has paid an enormous price for his efforts by spending the last five of those years in some of the country’s most notorious prisons and cell blocks.