Teaching lies at the heart of Fatemeh Shams’s academic work, bringing together Persian literature, cultural history, politics, gender, and questions of identity and belonging. Her courses invite students to approach Iran and the Persian-speaking world through poetry, fiction, film, and other cultural forms, while placing these works in conversation with broader historical and global contexts. From representations of Iranian women in literature and cinema to encounters between Iran and the West, her teaching emphasizes close reading, critical inquiry, and the ways literature and art illuminate experiences that conventional political and historical narratives often leave unseen.