Saïd Arjomand

Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus

Ph.D. 1980, University of Chicago

Areas of Interest

Comparative; historical; political; law; religion; global studies

Bio

Saïd Amir Arjomand (Ph.D, University of Chicago, 1980) has been at Stony Brook since 1978, and is currently the Editor of the Journal of Persianate Studies. Arjomand is the author of The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Organization and Societal Change in Shi'ite Iran from the Beginning to l890, the University of Chicago Press, l984; The Turban for the Crown. The Islamic revolution in Iran, Oxford University Press, 1988; and After Khomeini, Iran under his Successors, Oxford University Press, 2009. His article, "Constitutions and the Struggle for Political Order: A Study in the Modernization of Political Traditions," European Journal of Sociology/Archives européennes de sociologie,, 33.4 (1992), won the Section’s Award for the Best Essay in Comparative and Historical Sociology in 1993. This was followed by "The Law, Agency and Policy in Medieval Islamic Society: Development of the Institutions of Learning from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41.2 (1999). He had recently edited two books on comparative constitutionalism: Constitutionalism and Political Reconstruction, Brill, 2007, and Constitutional Politics in the Middle East, Hart Publishing, 2008. Professor Arjomand was the Crane Inaugural Fellow in Law and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, and a Carnegie Scholar (2006 - 2008). Arjomand is concurrently Director of the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies, guiding its project on the integration of social theory and regional studies. The studies so far edited by him and published in the Institute Pangaea II: Global/Local Studies SUNY Press Series are The Rule of Law, Islam, and Constitutional Politics in Egypt and Iran (edited with Nathan J. Brown, 2013), Social Theory and Regional Studies in the Global Age(2014), and The Arab Revolution of 2011:A Comparative Perspective (forthcoming). He also helped organized the Thematic Plenaries at the World Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg, Sweden, in July 2010, and is the co-editor (with Elisa Reis) of a volume of their selected papers, Worlds of Difference (Sage, 2013).

Graduate Courses

“Theory and method in Historical Sociology”
“Sociology of Max Weber”
“Comparative Cultural Sociology”
“Development and Modernization”

Selected Publications

Messianism and Sociopolitical Revolution in Medieval Islam. University of California Press, 2022.

Revolutions of the End of Time: Apocalypse, Revolution and Reaction in the Persianate World. Brill, 2022.

Revolution: Structure and Meaning in World History. The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Arjomand, Said. “The Rise of Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Sciences and Humanities and the Challenge of Comparative Sociology,” European Journal of Social Theory, 20.2 (2017).

Arjomand, Said. Sociology of Shiʿite Islam, Collected Essays, Brill, 2016