Böcker av Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

This 2009 (VII) special issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge entitled "'If I touch the depths of your heart': The Human Promise of Poetry in Memories of Mahmoud Darwish," is a commemorative issue on the life and poetry of the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, co-edited by a group of UMass Boston faculty and alumni. Other than keynote opening statements, the special issue is comprised of a selected series of longer and shorter poems by Mahmoud Darwish, followed by commemorative poetry and essays/articles that directly or indirectly engage with Mahmoud Darwish's work and/or the subject matter of his passion and love, Palestine and human rights and dignity. Contributions include: Selections from the poetry of the late Mahmoud Darwish in two recently published collections: If I Were Another: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) translated by Fady Joudah, and another, A River Dies of Thirst: Journals (Archipelago, 2009), translated by Catherine Cobham; keynote contribution by UMass Boston Provost Winston Langley, keynote contribution of a poem by Martha Collins; and commemorative poetry or prose by the Palestinian-American poet, writer, and scholar Lisa Suhair Majaj, Amy Tighe, Dorothy Shubow Nelson, Robert Lipton, Joyce Peseroff, Shaari Neretin, and Jack Hirschman; included are also essays/articles by Leila Farsakh, Rajini Srikanth, Erica Mena, Kyleen Aldrich, Nadia Alahmed, and Patrick Sylvain. Co-editors of the special issue were (alphabetically) Anna D. Beckwith, Elora Chowdhury, Leila Farsakh, Askold Melnyczuk, Erica Mena, Dorothy Shubow Nelson, Joyce Peseroff, Rajini Srikanth, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal's Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR's homepage.

This Fall 2002 (I, 2) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge include student papers from coursework completed at SUNY-Oneonta, as well as a paper from a retiring faculty at SUNY-Oneonta (Dr. Donald A. Nielsen) whose exploration of Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge inspired the title of the journal issue in terms of how the students' awareness of the way various ideologies (and utopias) have shaped their lives are intimately dependent upon critically adopting a spiritually self-reflective and socially reconstructive orientation toward their own lives as part of the social realities they study. Topics are: "Editor's Note: Spiritual Renaissances & Social Reconstructions," "From Anti-man to Anti-patriarchy," "Conspicuous Conflict," "Repairing the Soul: Matching Inner with Outer Beauty," "Defying the Sweatshop, Sociologically Speaking," "Struggles and Predicaments of Low-Income Families and Children," "Honor Thy Father and Mother," "My Translucent Father," "Mom and Dad's Waltz: A Dance of Love and Sacrifice," "Festus Ngaruka: Selected Poems & Commentary," "Religion, Utopia, and Ideology: Reflections on the Problems of Spiritual Renaissance and Social Reconstruction in the Sociology of Karl Mannheim," and "The Dialectics of World-History: A Guiding Thread." Contributors include: Emily Margulies, L. M. Damian, Kristy Canfield, Steve Sacco, Jennifer VanFleet, Nancy Chapin, Katie J. Dubaj, Rena Dangerfield, Festus Ngaruka, Donald A. Nielsen, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal's Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR's homepage.

[2024 Update Note: For a detailed new update on the interpretation of the Somerton man's code in the context of new findings proposed and reported in 2022 and thereafter about the identity of the Somerton man as being Carl Webb, read OKCIR's 2024 research report on the OKCIR site titled "The Somerton Man Carl Webb's WWII Death Poems Staged in His Eternal Shadow-Show "Tamám Shud" -- A Lasting J. C. Williamsonian Suicide Mystery Play Still Staging, Now Featuring Us, from the Somerton Beach in Australia Since Its Opening on Nov. 30, 1948." A press release for the same was published on April 15, 2024, titled,"Rest of Australia's Somerton Man Case Mystery Solved Using His Own Code As Deciphered in 2021, OKCIR Sociologist Reports." The 2021 publication still has evidentiary value since it documents how the 2021 deciphering of the Somerton man code, preceding 2022 findings, anticipated the 2022 proposed findings and its results.]In this OKCIR Research Report, hermeneutic sociologist, Khayyami scholar, and founding director of Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research (OKCIR), Mohammad H. (Behrooz) Tamdgidi, Ph.D., reports having solved the mystery of the code associated with the so-called "Somerton Man" or "Tamám Shud" case.The mysterious code appearing on the back page of a first edition copy of Edward FitzGerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam -- found months following the death of The Somerton Man (TSM) in South Adelaide, Australia, on Dec. 1, 1948 -- was a suicide contemplation and planning note he was poetically drafting for himself in the form of a quatrain on the back of his copy of The Rubaiyat, giving a gist of why and how he planned to carry out a deliberately mystery-laden suicide as his last dance for a lasting life. The code was the creative DNA of his suicide plot.It was written in the 'Tamám Shud' transliteration style -- in this case not from Persian, but from Arabic with which he must have been familiar, either natively due to coming ancestrally from the ethnically diverse and widely multilingual Russian Caucasus and/or by training and education. In other words, the 'Tamám Shud' torn-out piece found in TSM's fob pocket not only served as a bread crumb lead to his suicide note, it also offered the key to the code's deciphering.DNA is a self-replicating matter that reproduces the basic structure of a substance. TSM's 'code' offers the DNA of his last dance performance in public hoping of a lasting life, one that was sketched amid his medical suffering. He was reflecting on his life, terminal illness, and expected imminent death, while reading the meanings conveyed about life and death in FitzGerald's translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat -- a work of art that offered TSM a practical and proven example of how one can physically die but endure in human memory and spirit forever.This report mainly focuses on deciphering TSM's code, but the findings are then used to shed brief new light on one and/or another alternative wider story of what took place in Adelaide in 1948, in the years leading to it, and in the decades thereafter. The report invites readers to rethink the relevance of Omar Khayyam's poetry to the case, and also asks a pertinent question about another fold of the mystery, that is, why did it take so long to decipher a code that could have actually been decoded much earlier?The Somerton Man or Tamám Shud case has important lessons for us beyond the confines of the personal troubles of a man and those he knew, inviting us to use our sociological imaginations to explore such troubles in relation to the public issues that concern us all beyond the shores of Australia, and beyond the national and disciplinary walls fragmenting our lives, universities, and scientific methods in favor of transcultural and transdisciplinary modes of inquiry.