Specialization:
Areas of Concentration: Twentieth-Century Architecture in California; Architecture of the Iranian diaspora in Southern California; Modern and Contemporary Iranian Architecture
Faculty Advisor: Volker M. Welter
Committee Members: Jenni Sorkin, Talinn Grigor (Art History, UC Davis)
Dissertation: Persomania, Persophobia, Persophilia: A Century of Self-Fashioning with “Persian Architecture” and Its Reception in California
M.Arch. Thesis: “Disappearing Lives: The Material Culture of Sarā-ye Moshir” (McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, completed 2013)
M.L.Arch. Thesis: “The Eternal Landscapes” (Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, completed 2007)
Bio:
Ali Derafshi is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His dissertation elucidates how the collective societal attitudes of Persomania and Persophobia—loving and detesting “Persian” things and personas, respectively, before and after the Hostage Crisis—have informed and guided the perception, creation, and reception of what has been considered “Persian architecture” in twentieth-century California. His interests include California architectural history, the architectural production of the Iranian diaspora in the United States, migration and exile studies, and reception and architectural theories. Ali is the current recipient of the Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowship. He has received the Margaret Mallory Fellowship, the Humanities & Social Sciences Research Grant, and three fellowships from the Center for Middle East Studies (CMES). Before joining UCSB, Ali worked as an architect and landscape architect in Iran and Canada. He completed his Master of Architecture in 2013 at McGill University, as well as a Master of Landscape Architecture and a Bachelor of Architecture in Iran.