My interests include modern cultural and intellectual history, migration history, critical and gender theory, the history of European continental philosophy, and psychoanalysis.
“The event is not what happens. The event is that which can be narrated.”
Alan Feldman
History graduate student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Historian of nineteenth and twentieth century Europe & French cultural, intellectual, and migration history.
My name is Keanu Heydari. I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I’m currently in my second year of a Doctoral program in History at the Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I’m an alumnus of the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., History, French language minor, 2017).
I research nineteenth- and twentieth-century French cultural and intellectual history and its global contexts. My earlier graduate work examined questions about the institutionalization and instrumentalization of laïcité in the late nineteenth century. My 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.
Freelance Work
Editing & copy-editing
Translation work (French—English)
Book reviews
Archival work & Data management
Work & Teaching Experience
Graduate Student Instructor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
(Fall Semester 2020)
Prof. Joshua Cole—“Europe in the Age of Total War” History 318
Graduate Student Instructor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
(Winter Semester 2019)
Prof. Joshua Cole—“The Revolutionary Century: France, 1789-1871” History 313/French 344
Graduate Student Instructor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
(Fall Semester 2019)
Prof. Jeffrey Veidlinger—“The Holocaust: The Fate of The Jews, 1933-1949” History 386/Judaic 386/Germanic 391
Research Intern at Pacific Crossroads Church Los Angeles
(Aug. 2017 – Jun. 2018)
I worked with Rankin Wilbourne to assist his research project and to learn from and participate in various modes of pastoral work and ministry. Wilbourne’s book was published in 2019 by David C Cook as The Cross Before Me: Reimagining the Way to the Good Life.
Archivist at Air Quality Management Services (AQMS), LLC Los Angeles
(Jun. 2009 – Jul. 2015)
- My roles at AQMS, LLC included:
- Creating digital content models to effectively manage, search, and interpret large amounts of historical and environmental data using Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access
- Researching socio-geographic patterns in the Greater L.A. Area to discover potential target demographics for subsidiary initiatives
- Synthesizing pertinent updates in environmental law into quarterly reports and contextualizing changes through adjacent trace reports
- Designing and planning for distribution of promotional materials, including websites for subsidiary organizations using software in the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite
- Facilitating strategy meetings and introducing team building exercises to facilitate creative dialogue
