Global Iranian Revolution, 1978-79

Catalog description

Over the past four decades, analysis of the Iranian revolution has been constricted to the national framework. Scholars have mapped opposition actors or the Pahlavi state, while considering institutional strength or weakness (“the rentier state”, “mosque networks”, or Left parties). Even approaches seeking to foreground Islamism as a discursive tradition have slipped into Iranian exceptionalism: Shia Islamic peculiarities, clerical leadership, and Ruhollah Khomeini as a charismatic figure. This graduate seminar explores the global processes which helped and shaped the making of 1978-79 Iranian revolution. We will highlight the multiplicity of spaces of the revolution such as streets, schools, prisons, personal lives, and histories such as the Cold War and Global 1960s and 70s. We will study the Revolution within the historic context of two crucial decades leading to the demise of the old regime. This juncture reveals diverse global inspirations driving the revolution. The Iranian revolution’s global character cannot be understood except in terms of a circulatory system of flows of people and ideas between Iran, the West, Middle East, Asia, and the Soviet Union and those in Latin America.