[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Nasrin_Rahemieh_opt.jpg” caption=”Nasrin Rahemieh”]The year 1977 was monumental for Nasrin Rahimieh. It was two years before a major revolution in her country of origin, Iran, when she packed her bags for Canada. She had spent the two previous years in the United States and Switzerland completing her secondary education. Now, she was leaving behind family to start a post-secondary life that 26 years later would lead her to the role of dean of humanities at McMaster University.

When she started her education at Dalhousie University in 1977, her career path ahead was entirely different. Her intention, as it had been for years, was to be a chemist. But she was finding her courses in biology, chemistry and calculus didn't evoke the same passion in her as her humanities courses did. It was her history, language, and literature courses that allowed her to make sense of what was happening in her world.

“The revolution and the war that followed separated me from my parents and home, and I felt a need to understand my experiences; to understand what was happening in my life and in the world. The humanities courses helped me grapple with my sense of loss and isolation.”

Subsequently, Rahimieh switched her major and did her BA Honours in French and German and MA in German literature at Dalhousie. After that, she says, the most natural thing for her was to study comparative literature. She enrolled at the University of Alberta for her PhD and studied the literary and cultural relationships and interactions between Iran and Europe and North America.

With a post-doc and a Canada Research fellowship in hand, in 1989 Rahimieh was appointed an assistant professor of comparative literatures at the University of Alberta. She taught courses on modern Iranian fiction, literature of exile and displacement, feminism, and one of her own passions, writing by Iranian and Middle Eastern women. In 2000, the same year she became a full professor, she won an undergraduate teaching award.

She has published on post-revolutionary Iranian cinema and how it reflects political upheavals, social change, and cultural change in Iran after the revolution. “One of the things that intrigues me about contemporary Iranian cinema is the prominence of women filmmakers in a country associated with the constant curtailing of women's rights. How are such paradoxes possible? How do we study them and integrate them into a more complex understanding of Iran?”

Rahimieh also served as associate dean of the Faculty of Arts for Humanities and was extensively involved in graduate research supervision at the University of Alberta. She continues to supervise some PhD students at the University of Alberta. She also was co-ordinator for the undergraduate program in comparative literature, and a graduate advisor.

Rahimieh loves being part of the humanities field and feels strongly about its importance in post-secondary education. At the University of Alberta, questions about the need for humanities in university education, and what kind of funding it should receive, tweaked her interest.

“In Alberta, there were a lot of questions about whether the University needed humanities training,” she says. “The debate generated by these questions was very healthy and made me realize how much I cared about communicating the nature of the teaching and research we do in the humanities.”

She wants to continue to be part of this debate, and feels in a dean's position, she'll have a good opportunity for that. “First and foremost I want to convey a sense of the importance of humanities and the crucial role we play in university education.”

One of her first priorities is to talk to every department to find out what their goals are. “I want to hear from them to see how we can best identify common ground and how we will focus our energy.”

Rahimieh has been busy since she started her new position Aug. 1. Not just with settling into a new job, but also a new life.

She's certainly in step with what's going on, thanks in part to her other passion: step aerobics. In fact, one of the first things she did upon arriving in Hamilton was finding a place where she could join a step aerobics class.

Her goal is to go straight to the club after work and then to her Ancaster home where she'll partake in her other two passions in life: reading and hanging out with her three cats.

She's slowly getting used to living in a new place. “It took me a long time to accept that I had actually moved. Even though I was here and my possessions were around me and settled in the house, I would wake up in the morning thinking my real life was elsewhere and I would be going back to Alberta.”

You can't blame her. She left some important things behind, including her husband who will visit her on holidays and during the summer months when he's not teaching French at the University of Alberta. But she is surrounded by family in Toronto and Waterloo and has received a lot of visitors since arriving.

“The best part about moving here is that so many of my friends have already come to visit. In that sense, I feel like I'm home. This was meant to be.”

Rahimieh replaces Daniel Woolf who moved to the University of Alberta last year to become dean of arts. She is delighted that she is the first women dean of humanities at McMaster. But she suspects she's not the last. “These are the kinds of changes we have been talking about and teaching about,” she says. “To be a part of those changes is very exciting. This is the future.”