Contemporary Iranian Art
Contemporary Iranian Art

Author: Author

Publisher:

Published: 2025-04-08

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780863569791

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Iranian artists have been producing some of the world's most thought-provoking and intellectually grounded artworks. In this landmark compendium, renowned art historian Hamid Keshmirshekan provides a thorough review of contemporary art in Iran and shows that the twentieth century was a crucial period in the country's art and culture, when the legacies of tradition and modernism where critically reassessed. Contemporary Iranian Art is an unprecedented introduction to Iran's vibrant art history over the past one hundred years. This fully revised and updated edition features more than 370 colour illustrations by the country's leading artists, including Mahmoud Bakhshi, Shadi Ghadirian, Barbad Golshiri, Marcos Grigorian, Farhad Moshiri, Shirin Neshat, Sohrab Sepehri, Mitra Tabrizian, Parviz Tanavoli and Charles Hossein Zenderoudi.

Modern Iran in Perspective
Modern Iran in Perspective

Author: Ali Pirzadeh

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-09-05

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 3030257088

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This book highlights fundamental, but often neglected, issues important for a better understanding of present-day Iran. It underlines the idea that the most effective means for a nation to meet challenges and practices of the modern era lies with the fundamental values and norms that resonate with its inhabitants. This book is meant to be a companion to the author’s published book Iran Revisited: Exploring the Historical Roots of Culture, Economics, and Society that expands upon that book’s ideas, without repeating its theoretical reasoning. Its goal is to offer a better understanding of the current and evolving situations in Iran. In this regard, the author tried to clarify his position through a host of suggestions, most notably, the need to consider social rights as the bare minimum but extremely imperative criteria in our contemporary discourse for the betterment of our society. These rights, he argues, are the most fundamental tenets of any community that strives to succeed and flourish. In this context, the underlying discussion rests on the following claim: the most persisting problems in Iran are the outcomes of the gradual regression of the people’ mindset that persistently overlooked their heritage and value system in favor of imitating ideas that were/are neither compatible with their culture and history, nor applicable to the country’s socioeconomic conditions. The author, therefore, presumed that these predicaments are self-inflicted: they were neither caused by a specific state, nor belong to a historical period, or individual(s); they cannot be characterized by political or economic terminologies, but are firmly rooted in people inability to recognize that the most vital principle in developing and propelling a nation forward is the existence of a unified people.

Democracy in Modern Iran
Democracy in Modern Iran

Author: Ali Mirsepassi

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2011-10

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0814763448

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New perspectives on Iran's relationship to democracy Can Islamic societies embrace democracy? In Democracy in Modern Iran, Ali Mirsepassi maintains that it is possible, demonstrating that Islam is not inherently hostile to the idea of democracy. Rather, he provides new perspective on how such a political and social transformation could take place, arguing that the key to understanding the integration of Islam and democracy lies in concrete social institutions rather than pre-conceived ideas, the every day experiences rather than abstract theories. Mirsepassi, an Iranian native, provides a rare inside look into the country, offering a deep understanding of how Islamic countries like Iran and Iraq can and will embrace democracy. Democracy in Modern Iran challenges readers to think about Islam and democracy critically and in a far more nuanced way than is done in black-and-white dichotomies of Islam vs. Democracy, or Iran vs. the West. This essential volume contributes important insights to current discussions, creating a more complex conception of modernity in the Eastern world and, with it, Mirsepassi offers to a broad Western audience a more accurate, less clichéd vision of Iran’s political reality.

Hijab
Hijab

Author: Lloyd Ridgeon

Publisher:

Published: 2021-06-30

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9781909942561

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This book provides an overview of the range of seminarian thinking in Iran on the controversial topic of the hijab. During the modern period, Iran has suffered a great deal of conflict and confusion caused by the impact of Western views on the hijab in the 19th century, Riza Shah Pahlavi's 1936 decree banning Islamic head coverings, and the imposition of the veil in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Ḥijāb addresses the differences of opinion among seminarians on the hijab in the Islamic Republic of Iran, focusing on three representative thinkers: Murtaza Mutahhari who held veiling to be compulsory, Ahmad Qabil who argued for the desirability of the hijab, and Muhsin Kadivar who considers it neither necessary nor desirable. In the first chapter, the views of these three scholars are contextualized within the framework known as 'new religious thinking' among the seminarians. Comprehending the hermeneutics of this new religious thinking is key to appreciating how and why the younger generation of scholars have offered divergent judgements about the hijab. Following the first chapter, the book is divided into three parallel sections, each devoted to one of the three seminarians. These present a chronological approach, and each scholar's position on the hijab is assessed with reference to historical specificity and their own general jurisprudential perspective. Extensive examples of the writings of the three scholars on the hijab are also provided.

The Persians
The Persians

Author: Homa Katouzian

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780300121186

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In recent years, Iran has gained attention mostly for negative reasons—its authoritarian religious government, disputed nuclear program, and controversial role in the Middle East—but there is much more to the story of this ancient land than can be gleaned from the news. This authoritative and comprehensive history of Iran, written by Homa Katouzian, an acclaimed expert, covers the entire history of the area from the ancient Persian Empire to today’s Iranian state. Writing from an Iranian rather than a European perspective, Katouzian integrates the significant cultural and literary history of Iran with its political and social history. Some of the greatest poets of human history wrote in Persian—among them Rumi, Omar Khayyam, and Saadi—and Katouzian discusses and occasionally quotes their work. In his thoughtful analysis of Iranian society, Katouzian argues that the absolute and arbitrary power traditionally enjoyed by Persian/Iranian rulers has resulted in an unstable society where fear and short-term thinking dominate. A magisterial history, this book also serves as an excellent background to the role of Iran in the contemporary world.

The Lonely War
The Lonely War

Author: Nazila Fathi

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2014-10-14

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0465040926

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In the summer of 2009, as she was covering the popular uprisings in Tehran for the New York Times, Iranian journalist Nazila Fathi received a phone call. "They have given your photo to snipers," a government source warned her. Soon after, with undercover agents closing in, Fathi fled the country with her husband and two children, beginning a life of exile. In The Lonely War, Fathi interweaves her story with that of the country she left behind, showing how Iran is locked in a battle between hardliners and reformers that dates back to the country's 1979 revolution. Fathi was nine years old when that uprising replaced the Iranian shah with a radical Islamic regime. Her father, an official at a government ministry, was fired for wearing a necktie and knowing English; to support his family he was forced to labor in an orchard hundreds of miles from Tehran. At the same time, the family's destitute, uneducated housekeeper was able to retire and purchase a modern apartment -- all because her family supported the new regime. As Fathi shows, changes like these caused decades of inequality -- especially for the poor and for women -- to vanish overnight. Yet a new breed of tyranny took its place, as she discovered when she began her journalistic career. Fathi quickly confronted the upper limits of opportunity for women in the new Iran and earned the enmity of the country's ruthless intelligence service. But while she and many other Iranians have fled for the safety of the West, millions of their middleclass countrymen -- many of them the same people whom the regime once lifted out of poverty -- continue pushing for more personal freedoms and a renewed relationship with the outside world. Drawing on over two decades of reporting and extensive interviews with both ordinary Iranians and high-level officials before and since her departure, Fathi describes Iran's awakening alongside her own, revealing how moderates are steadily retaking the country.

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

Author: Hooman Majd

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2009-07-28

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0767928016

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Including a new preface that discusses the Iranian mood during and after the June 2009 presidential election and subsequent protests, this is an intimate look at a paradoxical country from a uniquely qualified journalist. The grandson of an eminent ayatollah and the son of an Iranian diplomat, Hooman Majd offers perspective on Iran's complex and misunderstood culture through an insightful tour of Iranian culture, introducing fascinating characters from all walks of life, including zealous government officials, tough female cab drivers, and open-minded, reformist ayatollahs. It's an Iran that will surprise readers and challenge Western stereotypes. A Los Angeles Times and Economist Best Book of the Year With a New Preface

Conceptualizing Iranian Anthropology
Conceptualizing Iranian Anthropology

Author: Shahnaz R. Nadjmabadi

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1845457951

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During recent years, attempts have been made to move beyond the Eurocentric perspective that characterized the social sciences, especially anthropology, for over 150 years. A debate on the “anthropology of anthropology” was needed, one that would consider other forms of knowledge, modalities of writing, and political and intellectual practices. This volume undertakes that challenge: it is the result of discussions held at the first organized encounter between Iranian, American, and European anthropologists since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It is considered an important first step in overcoming the dichotomy between “peripheral anthropologies” versus “central anthropologies.” The contributors examine, from a critical perspective, the historical, cultural, and political field in which anthropological research emerged in Iran at the beginning of the twentieth century and in which it continues to develop today.

Rethinking Iranian Nationalism and Modernity
Rethinking Iranian Nationalism and Modernity

Author: Kamran Scot Aghaie

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0292757492

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While recent books have explored Arab and Turkish nationalism, the nuances of Iran have received scant book-length study—until now. Capturing the significant changes in approach that have shaped this specialization, Rethinking Iranian Nationalism and Modernity shares innovative research and charts new areas of analysis from an array of scholars in the field. Delving into a wide range of theoretical and conceptual perspectives, the essays—all previously unpublished—encompass social history, literary theory, postcolonial studies, and comparative analysis to address such topics as: Ethnicity in the Islamic Republic of Iran Political Islam and religious nationalism The evolution of U.S.-Iranian relations before and after the Cold War Comparing Islamic and secular nationalism(s) in Egypt and Iran The German counterrevolution and its influence on Iranian political alliances The effects of Israel's image as a Euro-American space Sufism Geocultural concepts in Azar's Atashkadeh Interdisciplinary in essence, the essays also draw from sociology, gender studies, and art and architecture. Posing compelling questions while challenging the conventional historiographical traditions, the authors (many of whom represent a new generation of Iranian studies scholars) give voice to a research approach that embraces the modern era's complexity while emphasizing Iranian nationalism's contested, multifaceted, and continuously transformative possibilities.

Contemporary Iranian Art
Contemporary Iranian Art

Author: Talinn Grigor

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2014-06-15

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1780233094

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In the first comprehensive look at Iranian art and visual culture since the 1979 revolution, Talinn Grigor investigates the official art sponsored by the Islamic Republic, the culture of avant-garde art created in the studio and its display in galleries and museums, and the art of the Iranian diaspora within Western art scenes. Divided into three parts—street, studio, and exile—the book argues that these different areas of artistic production cannot be understood independently, revealing how this art offers a mirror of the sociopolitical turmoil that has marked Iran’s recent history. Exploring the world of galleries, museums, curators, and art critics, Grigor moves between subversive and daring art produced in private to propaganda art, martyrdom paraphernalia, and museum interiors. She examines the cross-pollination of kitsch and avant-garde, the art market, state censorship, the public-private domain, the political implications of art, and artistic identity in exile. Providing an astute analysis of the workings of artistic production in relation to the institutions of power in the Islamic Republic, this beautifully illustrated book is essential reading for anyone interested in Iranian history and contemporary art.