William Beeman

William Orman Beeman is an American scholar whose specialty is the Middle East. He is Professor Emeritus of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, where he was Chair of the Department of Anthropology for 13 years until his retirement in 2020. He has authored many articles and fourteen books on Iranian politics, theatre, language, and culture. About Born in Manhattan, Kansas, he grew up in Roeland Park, Kansas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he graduated from Tulsa Central High School in 1964. In his final year of high school from 1963-64 he was an American Field Service exchange student in Detmold, Germany where he attended Leopoldinum II Gymnasium. Beeman was trained as a linguistic anthropologist at Wesleyan University. He studied Anthropology at the University of Chicago starting in 1968, where he received his Masters degree in 1972 and his Ph.D. degree in 1976. Beeman is Professor Emeritus of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, where he was Chair of the Department of Anthropology for 13 years until his retirement in 2000. For 34 years previous to his appointment in Minnesota he was Professor of Anthropology; Theatre, Speech and Dance; and East Asian Studies at Brown University. From 1976 until 1979, Beeman worked with the Center for Traditional Performing Arts in Tehran, and at Reza Shah Kabir University (now known as University of Mazandaran) in the Institute of Social and Cultural Sciences.