Keanu Heydari

Heydari was born and raised in Los Angeles. He is currently a doctoral candidate in History at the Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He’s an alumnus of the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., History, French language minor, 2017). His current research project focuses on the out-migration of Iranians (especially intellectuals and cultural leaders) from Tehran to Paris before and after the 1953 coup d’état.

For the 2020-21 academic year, Heydari was a co-coordinator for the University of Michigan, Rackham Graduate School Migration & Displacement Interdisciplinary Workshop. Click here to learn more.

Heydari also runs a podcast, Explain Things to Me.

He is also interested in the broader currents of modern European intellectual history, especially the contributions of Michel Foucault (power-knowledge and critical discourse studies), Jacques Lacan (psychoanalysis), Jean-François Lyotard (postmodern conceptions of justice), and Étienne Balibar (critique of “equaliberty,” liberalism, and the nation-state). Heydari spends time reading in critical New Testament studies and the history of theology. He is finding a home in the “apocalyptic turn,” particularly in the work of Martinus C. de Boer, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, and Douglas A Campbell.