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 Ulamas 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, Gender, and Memory at the Constitutional Revolution and
after
U

Readings:
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
Class presentation:
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?

U

Readings:
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 12
Class presentation:
Hamid Dabashi, Iran: A People Interrupted (New York: The Free Press, 2007), 137181

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), 75116
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): 111138
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 Nafisis Reading Lolita in Tehran, Marjane Satrapis Persepolis Series, and
Azadeh Moavenis 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