Topics in Middle East Politics: The Iranian Revolution V77.9751 Prof. Haggai Ram Overview: More than 30 years have passed since 1979, the year when a self-styled Islamic Revolution unfolded in Iran. Historian Eric J. Hobsbawm branded this revolution as "one of the central social revolutions of the twentieth century"; and social scientist Richard Cottam described it as perhaps "the most popular revolution in the history of mankind." Whatever the case may be, we are now permitted to use the benefit of hindsight to revisit the 1979 revolution. In the first part of the course we will review the manifold causes of the 1979 revolution in a historical perspective, tracing the social, political, economic and cultural bases of the rise of the revolutionary movement and political Islam (or Islamism) in Iran. We will then move on to situate the revolution in a global context. This will enable us to examine Iranian history since 1979 in comparative perspective as well as integrate the revolution into the "entangled histories" of modernity of which it is part. At the same time we will examine the cultural dimensions of the post-1979 state in Iran. We will consider cultural production in the Islamic Republic of Iran as a site of state domination and oppositional resistance. We will suggest that the Islamic Republic is a "scopic regime," developing a symbolic Islamism as a tool of propaganda and hegemony. At the same time, literature, cinema, and the visual arts have been sites of resistance. Course Requirements: 1. Active participation: 20%. 2. Class presentation: 10%. 3. final paper: 70%. Topics and Required Readings: 1. Shi`ism and Iranian Shi`ism: a Socio-Historical Overview Readings: Hamid Dabashi, Authority in Islam from the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993), 95-120 Charles Lindholm, The Islamic Middle East: an Historical Anthropology (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), 167-180 Class presentation: David Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040-1797 (London & New York, Longman, 1988), 94-123 Hamid Algar, “Shi`ism and Iran in the Eighteenth-Century,” in T. Naffad and R. Owen (eds.), Studies in Eighteenth-Century Islamic History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977), 288-302 2. Qajar Iran: Colonialism, Nationalism, Revolution Readings: Ervand Abrahamian, “Oriental Despotism: The Case of Qajar Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974): 3-31 Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, "Hallmarks of Humanism: Hygiene and Love of Homeland in Qajar Iran", The American Historical Review 105 (October 2000): 1171-1203. Class presentation: Hamid Dabashi, Iran: A People Interrupted (New York: The New Press, 2007), 32-104 3. Secularism and Religion at the Turn of the Century Said Amir Arjomand, “The Ulama’s Traditionalist Opposition to Parliamentarism,” Middle Eastern Studies 17 (1981), pp. 174-190 Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 34-62. Class presentation: Mangol Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982), chapter 5 4. Nationalism,U Gender, and Memory at the Constitutional Revolution and after ReadingsU :U Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Is Our Name Remembered? Writing the History of Iranian Constitutionalism As If Women and Gender Mattered,” Iranian Studies 29, (1-2) (Winter/Spring 1996): 85-109 ClassU presentation:U Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 1-25 U 5. The Pahlavi Dynasty: "Great Civilization" and/or Prelude to Revolution? ReadingsU :U Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 63-96, 123-154 Cyrus Schayegh, "'Seeing Like a State': An Essay on the Historiography of Modern Iran," International Journal Of Middle East Studies 42 (February 2010): 37-61 Class presentation: M. Parsa, Social Origins of the Islamic Revolution (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1989), 63-101 6. An “Islamic” Revolution? Readings: Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic of Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 13-39 Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993), chapters 1- 2 Class presentation: Hamid Dabashi, Iran: A People Interrupted (New York: The Free Press, 2007), 137- 181 7. Memory and Power in the Revolution and its Aftermath, Parts 1 & 2 Readings: Talinn Grigor, "Preserving the Antique Modern: Persepolis '71," Future Anterior 2 (Summer 2005): 22-29 Haggai Ram, “Multiple Iconographies: Political Posters in the Iranian Revolution,” in Shiva Balaghi and Lynn Gumpert (eds.), Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution (London, I.B. Tauris, 2002), 89-101 Haggai Ram, “The Immemorial Iranian Nation? School Textbooks and Historical Memory in Postrevolutionary Iran,” Nations and Nationalism 6 (January 2000): 67-90 Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993), chapter 6 Class presentation: Haggai Ram, “Mythology of Rage: Representations of the Self and the Other in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” History and Memory 8 (Spring\Summer 1996): 67-87 Talinn Grigor, "Of Metamorphosis," Third Text 17 (2003): 207-225 8. Sexual Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Parts 1 & 2 Readings: Janet Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 198-233, 265-291 Raha Bahreini, “From Perversion to Pathology: Discourses and Practices of Gender Policing in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Muslim World Journal of Human Rights, 5 (2008): 1-49 Divorce Iranian Style, a film by Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, UK, 1998 Be Like Others, a film by Tanaz Eshaghian, Canada, Iran, UK, 2008 9. The United States and Iran before and after 1979 Readings: Edward Said, Covering Islam (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 75- 116 Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 198-234 Class presentation: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, “The International Politics of Secularism: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Alternatives, 29 (2004): 111- 138 10. Israel and Iran before and after 1979 Haggai Ram, "To Banish the 'Levantine Dunghill' from Within: Toward a Cultural Understanding of Israeli Anti-Iran Phobias," International Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (May): 249-268 Class presentation: Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), several excerpts 11. The Dialectics of Diaspora and Homeland, Part 1: Iranian Jewry Readings: Haggai Ram, “Caught between Orientalism and Aryanism, Exile and Homeland: The Jews of Iran in Zionist/Israeli Imagination,” Hagar: Studies in Culture, Polity, and Identities 8 (Summer 2008): 83-111 Class presentation: Ella Shohat, "The Invention of the Mizrahim." Journal of Palestine Studies 29 (Autumn 1999): 5-20 12. The Dialectics of Diaspora and Homeland, Part 2: Women Writers in Exile Readings: Liora Hendelman-Baavur, “Guardians of New Spaces: ‘Home’ and ‘Exile’ in Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Series, and Azadeh Moaveni’s Lipstick Jihad,” Hagar: Studies in Culture, Polity, and Identities 8 (Summer 2008): 45-62 Persepolis, a film by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, 2007, France Class Presentation: Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: A Story of a Childhood, New York, 2003; Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Return, New York, 2004 .