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
Books
Forthcoming. Gurdjieff and Hypnosis: A Hermeneutic Study. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Release due Dec. 2009)
2007. Advancing Utopistics: The Three Component Parts and Errors of Marxism. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. (Softcover edition due September 2009).
Articles
2008. “’I Change Myself, I Change the World’: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Sociological Imagination in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.” Humanity & Society, v. 32, n. 4, 311-335.
2008. “Public Sociology and the Sociological Imagination: Revisiting Burawoy’s Sociology Types.” Humanity & Society, v. 32, n. 2, 131-143.
2007. “Abu Ghraib as a Microcosm: The Strange Face of Empire as a Lived Prison.” Sociological Spectrum, v. 27, n. 1, 29-55.
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, 291-328.
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.
Chapters
Forthcoming. “Decolonizing Selves: The Subtler Violences of Colonialism and Racism in Fanon, Said, and Anzaldúa.” In Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy edited by Elizabeth A. Hoppe and Tracey Nicholls. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Forthcoming. “Utopystics and the Asiatic Modes of Liberation: Gurdjieffian Contributions to the Sociological Imaginations of Inner and Global World-Systems.” In The Rise of Asia and the Transformation of the World-System, edited by Ganesh K. Trichur. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Forthcoming. “Rethinking Diversity Amid Pedagogical Flexibility: Fostering the Scholarships of Learning and Teaching of the Sociological Imagination.” In Making Connections: Self-Study & Social Change, co-edited by Kathleen Pithouse (McGill), Claudia Michell (McGill), and Lebo Moletsane (South African Human Sciences Research Council). New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group.
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.” Pp. 202-219 in Islam and the Orientalist World-System, co-edited by Khaldoun Samman and Mazhar Al-Zo’by. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.