Throughout modern Iranian history, culture has served as a means of imposing unity and cohesion onto society. The Pahlavi monarchs used it to project an image of Iran as an ancient civilisation, re-emerging as an equal to Western nations, while the revolutionaries deployed it to remake the country into an Islamic nation. Just as Iranian culture has been continually re-interpreted, the representations and avocations of Iranian identity vary amongst Iranians across the world. Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity demonstrates these fissures and the incompatibilities that refuse to be written out of national culture, analysing works of literature, popular music, graphic art and film, as well as oral narratives. Using works produced before and after the 1979 revolution, created both inside and outside of Iran, this study reveals neglected complexities and contradictions in the field of Iranian cultural production. It considers how contested claims to culture, whether they originated in Iran or the Iranian diaspora, shape our understanding of this culture and what spaces they create for new articulations of it, and in doing so offers an important re-examination of our collective concept of culture. This book would be an excellent resource for students and scholars of Middle East Studies and Iranian Studies, specifically Iranian culture including film and contemporary literature and the Iranian diaspora.

Throughout modern Iranian history, culture has served as a means of imposing unity and cohesion onto society. The Pahlavi monarchs used it to project an image of Iran as an ancient civilisation, re-emerging as an equal to Western nations, while the revolutionaries deployed it to remake the country into an Islamic nation. Just as Iranian culture has been continually re-interpreted, the representations and avocations of Iranian identity vary amongst Iranians across the world. Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity demonstrates these fissures and the incompatibilities that refuse to be written out of national culture, analysing works of literature, popular music, graphic art and film, as well as oral narratives. Using works produced before and after the 1979 revolution, created both inside and outside of Iran, this study reveals neglected complexities and contradictions in the field of Iranian cultural production. It considers how contested claims to culture, whether they originated in Iran or the Iranian diaspora, shape our understanding of this culture and what spaces they create for new articulations of it, and in doing so offers an important re-examination of our collective concept of culture. This book would be an excellent resource for students and scholars of Middle East Studies and Iranian Studies, specifically Iranian culture including film and contemporary literature and the Iranian diaspora.

The pioneering Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad was an iconic figure in her own day and has come to represent the spirit of revolt against patriarchal and cultural norms in 1960s Iran. Five decades after her tragic death at the age of 32, Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran brings her ground-breaking work into new focus. During her lifetime Farrokhzad embodied the vexed predicament of the contemporary Iranian woman, at once subjected to long-held traditional practices and influenced by newly introduced modern social sensibilities. Highlighting her literary and cinematic innovation, this volume examines the unique place Farrokhzad occupies in Iran, both among modern Persian poets in general and as an Iranian woman writer in particular. The authors also explore Farrokhzad's appeal outside Iran in the Iranian diasporic imagination and through the numerous translations of her poetry into English. It is a fitting and authoritative tribute to the work of a remarkable woman which will introduce and explain her legacy for a 21st-century audience. This second edition includes two new chapters which explore a travelogue Farrokhzad wrote during her time in Italy, and an examination of Farrokhzad's influence on the writings of the Afghan female poet Laila Sarahat Rowshani.

On the streets of Tehran, Nuri Hushiar knows his blond hair and blue eyes attract attention. While he relishes the attention he cannot avoid the uneasy feeling of being out of place. This sense of being exceptional and estranged is the hallmark of his character and the focus of his struggle in Taghi Modarressi's last stunning novel.Set around the time of the revolution, ""The Virgin of Solitude"" follows the parallel lives of a transplanted Austrian woman, who has made Iran her home, and her grandson, Nuri, who desperately misses his mother but hides his longing behind a veneer of teenage bravado. As the turmoil of the revolution envelops the country, grandmother and grandson witness the dissolution of social, class, and political order, while searching for a sense of belonging.Nasrin Rahimieh's translation captures the tone and mood of the original, rendering both Modarressi's subtle humor and assured prose with effortless precision.

This special issue of "Radical History Review" marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Iranian revolution, an event that reverberated across the globe, causing rifts and realignments in international relations, as well as radical changes in Iranian political, social, and cultural institutions. The Iranian revolution of 1979 was a historical inevitability neither in its inception nor in its outcome; however, its continued domestic and global significance - often misunderstood and misinterpreted - remains indisputable. The issue explores the complex and evolving nature of the post-revolutionary dynamics in Iran and calls for renewed reflection on the roots of the revolution, the processes leading to its proponents' victory, and its impact on the Muslim world and the global balance of power. The articles in this interdisciplinary issue take up the legacy of the revolution within and outside the borders of Iran and offer critical evaluation and new insights into the transformations that Iran experienced as a result of the revolution. One essay discusses the role of the crowd in the revolution, while another traces the genealogy of the discourse of anti-Zionism in Iranian circles. Other articles explore the treatment of the revolution in the Egyptian press and illustrate how the trauma of the revolution is portrayed in diasporic Iranian women's biographies. The issue also features a "Reflections" section, which includes eight short essays that provide snapshots of postrevolutionary politics, economics, literature, cinema, and visual arts, demonstrating both radical changes and continuities in Iranian society. Contributors include Ervand Abrahamian, Mahdi Ahouie, Niki Akhavan, Said Amir Arjomand, Mansour Bonakdarian, Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, M. R. Ghanoonparvar, Hanan Hammad, Taraneh Hemami, Persis M. Karim, Mazyar Lotfalian, Ali Mirsepassi, Minoo Moallem, Nima Naghibi, Nasrin Rahimieh, Ahmad Sadri, and Djavad Salehi-Isfahani. Kamran Talattof Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is Associate Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mansour Bonakdarian is visiting Assistant Professor of History at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Nasrin Rahimieh is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Ahmad Sadri is Professor of Sociology at Lake Forest College. Ervand Abrahamian is CUNY Distinguished Professor of History at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center.