Mohammad H. Tamdgidi
Office: Wheatley, 4th floor, Rm 3
Telephone: 617-287-3954
Email: mohammad.tamdgidi@umb.edu
Research
Tamdgidi's current research and teaching in liberating social theory are framed by an interest in understanding how personal self-knowledges and world-historical social structures constitute one another. This is pursued via critical comparative/integrative explorations of utopian, mystical, and scientific (utopystic) discourses and practices. Tamdgidi is actively involved in editing Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-knowledge published by the Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science, which he initiated in 2002 (see Tamdgidi's Homepage). He has been a co-founder, principal organizer, and the proceedings editor of the Social Theory Forum conference series (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007) at UMass Boston.
Representative Publications
2007. Advancing Utopistics: The Three Component Parts and Errors of Marxism. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Forthcoming. "Public Sociology and the Sociological Imagination: Revisiting Burawoy's Sociology Types." Humanity & Society.
Forthcoming. “The Simultaneity of Self and Global Transformations: Bridging with Anzaldúa’s Liberating Vision.” In Bridging: How and Why Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own. Academics, Activists, and Artists Share their Testimonios, co-edited by AnaLouise Keating and Gloria González-López. Texas: University of Texas Press.
2008. "From Utopistics to Utopystics: Integrative Reflections on Potential Contributions of Mysticism to World-Systems Analyses and Praxes of Historical Alternatives." In Islam and the Orientalist World-System, co-edited by Khaldoun Samman and Mazhar Al-Zo'by. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
2007. “Abu Ghraib as a Microcosm: The Strange Face of Empire as a Lived Prison.” Sociological Spectrum, v. 27, n. 1.
2006. “Toward a Dialectical Conception of Imperiality: The Transitory (Heuristic) Nature of the Primacy of Analyses of Economies in World-Historical Social Science.” REVIEW (Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations), v. XXIX, n. 4.
2005. “Orientalist and Liberating Discourses of East-West Difference: Revisiting Edward Said and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” The Discourse of Sociological Practice, Vol. 7, dounle-issues 1&2, Spring/Fall 2005, 187-201.
2005. "Working Outlines for the Sociology of Self-Knowledge." Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, Vol. III, Nos. 1&2, Fall ‘04/Spring ‘05, 123-133.
2004. “Freire Meets Gurdjieff and Rumi: Toward the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Oppressive Selves.” The Discourse of Sociological Practice, Vol. 6, Issue 2, Fall 2004, 165-185.
2004. Article-length excerpt from the second (“Gurdjieff and Mysticism: The Archaeology of an Eastern Teaching”) chapter of dissertation titled "Mysticism and Utopia: Toward the Sociology of Self-Knowledge and Human Architecture (A Study in Marx, Gurdjieff, and Mannheim" (SUNY-Binghamton, 2002), published in Gurdjieff: A Reading Guide (edited by J. Walter Driscoll), Third Edition. http://www.gurdjieff-bibliography.com
2001. “Open the Antisystemic Movements: The Book, the Concept, and the Reality.” REVIEW (Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations), XXIV, 2, summer, 299-336.