Amir Ali Nojoumian

Amir Ali Nojoumian currently holds positions as a lecturer in English Literature and Professional Writing at Concordia University and Dawson College in Montreal, Canada. Before joining the academic community in Canada, he served as a faculty member in English Literature and Critical Theory at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran, for two decades. Nojoumian completed his graduate studies for both his MA and PhD degrees at the University of Leicester, UK. Notably, his doctoral research delved deeply into the philosophical dimensions of literature, focusing on the seminal ideas of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin. 

Nojoumian’s scholarly endeavours extend beyond the confines of traditional academia, as evidenced by his active participation in the “Tehran Semiotics Circle,” an independent, interdisciplinary research collective, from 2002 to 2018. His intellectual pursuits in semiotics and narratology of cinema are exemplified in his notable book publications in Persian, including Signs at the Threshold: Essays in Semiotics (2016) and Semiotics: A Reader (2017). and A Poststructuralist Reading of Abbas Kiarostami’s Films (co-authored with Farideh Afarin), 2011. 

Nojoumian’s extensive research portfolio encompasses a wide array of topics, including narrative and semiotics of films, the representations of diaspora in cinema, analyses of seminal works such as Rakhshan Banietemad’s “Narges” and Kioumars Pourahmad’s “The Night Bus,” as well as critical studies of Ibrahim Golestan’s “Asrar Ganj Dareh Jenni” and Amir Naderi’s “The Runner.” Additionally, his scholarly inquiries delve into the representations of gendered spaces in Iranian cinema and the portrayal of social classes within Iranian cinematic tradition. 

His recent contribution to the Palgrave Handbook of Children’s Film and Television exemplifies his dedication to the captivating realm of children’s literature and cinema. His chapter, “Constructing Childhood in Modern Iranian Children’s Cinema: A Cultural History” (2019), explores cultural representations in Iranian cinema. Furthermore, Nojoumian has contributed to the understanding of Abbas Kiarostami’s cinematic oeuvre, notably through his recent chapter, “Towards a Poetics of Childhood Ethics in Abbas Kiarostami’s Children’s Films” (co-authored with Amir Hadi Nojoumian). Published in Asian Children’s Literature and Film in a Global Age: Local, National and Transnational Trajectories by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020, this study elucidates the ethical dimensions of childhood in Kiarostami’s cinematic masterpieces. 

Contributions