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OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)

The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics) is an independent research and pedagogical initiative dedicated to exploring, in a simultaneously world-historical and self-reflective framework, the human search for a just global society. Since the world's utopian, mystical, and scientific movements have been the primary sources of inspiration, knowledge, and/or practice in this field, OKCIR aims to critically reexamine the limits and contributions of these world-historical traditions—seeking to clearly understand why they have failed to bring about the good society, and what each can integratively contribute toward realizing that end. The center aims to develop new conceptual (methodological, theoretical, historical), practical, curricular, and inspirational structures of knowledge whereby the individual can radically understand and determine how world-history and her/his selves constitute one another. OKCIR publishes Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, which explores issues pertaining to the center's interests, and pursues innovative editorial, virtual, and print publishing practices reflecting its substantive goals. (Read more…)

Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, Ph.D., Founding Director

Webpage at UMass Boston
UMB Sociology Department
UMass Boston Homepage

Mohammad H. (Behrooz) Tamdgidi is Associate Professor of Sociology, teaching Social Theory at UMass Boston. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology (in conjunction with a graduate certificate in Middle Eastern studies) from SUNY-Binghamton and a B.A. in Architecture from U.C. Berkeley. His fields of theoretical specialization include Sociological Imaginations, Self and Society, World-Historical Sociology, Sociology of Knowledge, Social Movements, and Utopias. Tamdgidi's research and teaching are framed by an interest in understanding how personal self-knowledges and world-historical social structures constitute one another. His continuing research on liberating social theory in self and world-historical contexts is pursued via critical comparative/integrative explorations of utopian, mystical, and scientific discourses and practices. Tamdgidi is the founding editor of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, a publication of OKCIR: the Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics), which serves to frame his research and pedagogical initiatives.

Previous Issues of
Human Architecture