Fatemeh Keshavarz is the Roshan Chair in Persian Studies and Director of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Maryland. She is a published poet and author of six books including Reading Mystical Lyric: the Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi, Recite in the Name of the Red Rose: Poetic Sacred Making in Twentieth Century Iran, and Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran. In 2009, her NPR appearance on 'On Being: The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi' received the Peabody Award, and she received the Hershel Walker Peace and Justice Award.