Baskerville Webinars

Between 2020 and 2023, Professor Shannon worked with the Baskerville Institute – an NGO in Salt Lake City, Utah named after Howard Baskerville – to moderate a series of webinars. These webinars were significant because, in addition to sustaining academic conversations through the pandemic years, they brought together scholars from the United States and around the world to discuss the role of “friendship” in the history of US-Iran relations.
Shannon’s lecture on “American Connections with Iran, Iranian Connections with America” is available here in two parts: part 1 and part 2.
Please click on the title of any of the talks listed below to view the webinars that Shannon helped to organize and moderate.

2020-09-28: Houchang Chehabi, Iran in the Early Twentieth Century – part 1 and part 2
2021-01-14: John Limbert, What Does the Future Hold for the Biden Presidency – part 1 and part 2
2021-02-01: David Menashri, Iran and Israel: From Close Friendship to Bitter Enmity
2021-02-22: Kelly Shannon, The Story of Morgan Shuster in Persia
2021-03-22: Michael Zirinsky, American Presbyterian Missionaries in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Iran
2021-04-23: Reza Aslan, Howard C. Baskerville: The American Lafayette of Iran
2021-09-22: Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi, The U.S. Peace Corps in Iran: A History of Friendship and Contributions
2021-10-11: Joan Gaughan, The Shuster Mission to Iran: Leaving Something Worthwhile Behind
2021-11-22: Liora Hendelman-Baavur, Creating the Modern Iranian Woman
2021-12-03: James Goode, Living, Loving Iran: A Memoir
2022-01-04: Hooman Estelami, The Americans of Urumia: Iran’s First Americans and their Mission to the Assyrian Christians
2022-03-04: Richard Garlitz, A Mission for Development: Utah Universities and Economic Development in Iran
2022-04-11: Persis Karim, What Makes Us Iranian: An Exploration of the Iranian Diaspora Forty Years On
2023-10-11: Amir Reza, Building Bridges through Education

The cover of a pamphlet commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Baskerville’s death. He died in 1909 during Iran’s Constitutional Revolution, and the pamphlet was published in 1959 in both English and Persian.
More information on Howard Baskerville and his memory, see:
Chapter 5 in Mission Manifest
Professor Shannon’s Sherman Emerging Scholar Echo Lecture: Memory and Mission in U.S.-Iran Relations
The Baskerville Institute’s website