Sights and Sounds of Modernity: Iran 1925-1979

Catalog description

This course explores the cross-fertilization of visual and poetic media in twentieth-century Iran up to the Islamic Revolution. Drawing on postcolonial theories, the recent transnational turn in literary studies, and close analyses of poems, short stories, and films, we will examine conceptions of center and periphery, power, identity, and selfhood in order to re-orient our understanding of modernity. Writers and filmmakers studied include Sadeq Hedayat, Fereydoun Rahnema, Forugh Farrokhzad, Ibrahim Golestan, Mehdi Akhavan Sales, Gholam-Hossein Saedi, Dariush Mehrjui, Sohrab Sepehri, Parviz Kimiavi and Nasser Taghvaei. As a final project, students may choose to submit a critical essay, film, collection of poems, and/or an original work of art. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.