Browsing by Subject "Iran"
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Item Children in post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema : visions of the future(2015-05) Houck, Kelly Lawrence; Atwood, Blake Robert, 1983-; Aghaie, KamranThis project focuses on children in Iranian cinema in the Islamic Republic era in order to examine how child characters reveal visions of their future in Iran. This analysis will help the reader understand how privilege functions in relation to citizenship in Iran. Prior research argues that children in Iranian cinema represent humanist themes and utopic images of Iranian society. My thesis builds on this work to argue that images of the child represent more nuanced imaginings of the future, dependent on their ability to confront problems successfully. This study does not consider children's films, but rather films with prominent child characters. It looks at child characters both as agents whose desires and anxieties drive the film's action and as objects with whom the audience can visualize the future. This project includes Children of Heaven (Bachcheh-hā-ye āsemān), The Mirror (Āineh), Where is the Friend's Home (Khāne-ye dust kojāst), Bashu, the Little Stranger (Bāshu gharibe-ye kuchek), Baran (Bārān), The Apple (Sib), Life, and Nothing More (Zandegi va digar hich), The White Balloon (Bādkonak-e sefid), and The Day I Became a Woman (Ruzi ke zan shodam). My thesis argues that the ways in which child characters interact with their environment highlight their level of privilege, revealing what types of individuals are best fit to thrive in Iranian society under the Islamic Republic. I argue that notions of citizenship and nationalism are integral to the characters' identities and indicated futures. Specifically, both ideal children and non-ideal children who maintain Iranian citizenship will have successful futures as participants in Iranian society, while non-Iranian nationals may not.Item The citizen viewer : questioning the democratic authority of the camera phone image(2015-05) Cooley, Claire Sloan; Atwood, Blake Robert, 1983-; Wilkins, KarinThe inundation of mobile phone images has dramatically changed how information about current events is disseminated, accessed, and understood. The mobile camera phone was significant to the Egyptian Revolution and the Green Movement in Iran, and scholars who have considered citizen journalist images in these contexts suggest that they have the power to create democratic "deterritorialized" communities and provide objective evidence. This scholarship has assumed a dangerous link between citizen journalist images and democracy, and it has overlooked opportunities for thoughtful comparison of the use of citizen journalist footage in Iran and Egypt. My research examines how films by Iranian and Egyptian filmmakers have interacted with new media technologies in order to challenge the trust we've placed in images and to develop a theoretical framework for comparison between Egypt and Iran. Filmmakers from Iran and Egypt have begun to engage questions of citizen journalism in their narrative and documentary films. Jafar Panahi's This Is Not a Film (2011) and Ahmad Abdalla's Rags And Tatters (2013), for example, draw our attention to the limits of the mobile phone image and address concerns of spectatorship in light of the Green Movement and Egyptian Revolution. In this report, I examine how This is Not a Film and Rags and Tatters criticize the way in which popular media on the Egyptian Revolution and Green Movement celebrate and exploit the mobile phone image's "truth" value. Drawing on Bill Nichols and Susan Sontag, whose works remind us to consider what the image enframes and excludes, I argue that Panahi and Abdalla's films criticize the trust that we have put in citizen journalism, and they show us that despite developments in image-creating technology, all images produce limited perspectives. As such, these two filmmakers interrogate the image’s frame in order to construct a democratic practice of viewing in Iran and Egypt.Item Conflict politics surrounding the advent of ISIS: an Iranian media perspective(2015-12) Martin, Matthew Allen; Shirazi, Faegheh, 1952-; Aghaie, Kamran S.At first glance, Iran and the United States seem to be natural allies in the fight against the Islamic State. However, there has been neither military cooperation between the two countries in this regard nor is there evidence to suggest that the respective governments of these countries understand one another. In a twofold effort of increasing mutual understanding and filling in a gap in media content analysis, this research used qualitative discourse analysis to investigate the Iranian regime’s political narrative surrounding the Islamic State as presented by the regime-affiliated publications Kayhan Farsi and Kayhan English, printed in Farsi and English respectively, from 1 June 2014 to 31 August 2014. The study found that while both Iranian regime publications advocated for the same political ends, they did so via different means; generally, Kayhan Farsi justified its stances on various issues by scapegoating the United States and Israel while Kayhan English favored legalistic arguments seemingly designed to persuade English speakers to the regime position. The harsh anti-American tone taken by the Iranian regime makes any counter-ISIS cooperation beyond military de-confliction appear unlikely.Item Culture shock, trauma, exile, and nostalgia in Iranian-American literature(2011-05) Reza, Carmen Amrina; Ghanoonparvar, M. R. (Mohammad R.); Shirazi, FaeghehThis thesis is concerned with the concepts of exile, trauma, and nostalgia and how they all come together to create a sense of culture shock that the subjects of my thesis encountered. Azar Nafisi, Nahid Rachlin, Tara Bahrampour, and Azadeh Moaveni, are all Iranian-American authors, and despite their different life experiences and ages, they all encountered culture shock as it related to male-female relations, Iranian gender norms and issues of sex and sexuality and treatments and views of the female body as it relates to reproduction.Item Formal systems and informal networks : Iranian power politics in principle and practice(2014-05) Pritchard, Megan Ashley; Suri, Jeremi; Inboden, William, 1972-This work explains the structure and function of the contemporary Iranian government by examining the government's formal political, religious and national security structures and the informal networks that empower and constrain the individuals who fill formal regime positions. The research argues that the Islamic Republic of Iran should be understood as a solar system in which the Supreme Leader resides at the center and oversees all other government bodies. These bodies have their own responsibilities and power, but ultimately answer to the Supreme Leader. The work outlines the current Iranian political landscape by examining the dominant ideological currents. It analyzes informal networks using the examples of three relevant actors: President Hassan Ruhani, Majles Speaker Ali Larijani and Supreme Leader Advisor Ali-Akbar Velayati. The paper concludes with predictions for evolutions in Iranian policy in the remainder of the first Ruhani Administration.Item From fellows to foreigners : the Qajar experience in the Ottoman Empire(2012-08) Baghoolizadeh, Beeta; Aghaie, Kamran Scot; Shirazi, FaeghehThis paper explores the impact of Qajar-Ottoman diplomacy on issues of identity and sovereignty during the late nineteenth century as addressed in the Treaties of Erzurum of 1828 and 1848. Through these treaties, the Qajars and the Ottomans introduced notions of imperial identities, extraterritoriality, and extended their imperial spheres of influence. The Treaties of Erzurum defined subjecthood and sovereignty over subjects based on place of origin, not current location. This radical change in international politics created a new, bureaucratic method of identification. Focusing on the Qajar perspective, this paper proposes that although Qajar subjects had always travelled to the Ottoman Empire for religious or economic reasons, the Treaties of Erzurum in 1828 and 1848 changed Middle Eastern geopolitics by legally allowing the Qajar government to exercise sovereign rights over its subjects. To better understand the consequences of these new imperial identities and labels, this paper looks at different communities in the Ottoman Empire that shared special relationships with the Qajars. Each of these chapters focuses on their affiliation with the Qajars and how the Treaties of Erzurum affected them: first, the Qajar travelers, second, the Qajar expatriates, and third, the Ottoman Shi’is. The examination of Qajar government documents, Persian travelogues and newspapers reveals complicated relationships between the Qajars and these communities. Analysis of each provides insight on the Qajar Empire’s efforts in fostering a relationship with these communities, as made possible by the Treaties of Erzurum. This study contributes to a number of narratives involving the Qajar Empire. First, it challenges the weak imagery surrounding the Qajar government and shows the Qajar extension of power outside its borders. Furthermore, this paper engages in the issue of identity, a crucial concept for understanding nascent, pre-nationalist sentiments. Discussion of the Treaties of Erzurum in conjunction with nationalism or imperial power remains overwhelmingly neglected. Although previous scholars have alluded to extraterritoriality in their research, the discourse on subjecthood and identity beyond imperial borders has been ignored in the Middle Eastern context. This study serves as a starting point for future research on the subject.Item How Iran could democratize(2015-05) Damiano, Steven Tabak; Shirazi, Faegheh, 1952-; Gholz, Eugene, 1971-In this report, I apply modernization and political institution-based theories of democracy to the Islamic Republic of Iran to look at the conditions under which Iran could transition from authoritarian rule to democratic rule. I provide an overview of the unique features of democracy and argue that democracies have a better track record than authoritarian regimes in refraining from the use of violence against their citizens and avoiding disastrous economic policies, two areas where the Islamic Republic has a poor track record. I then provide an overview of theories that explain the most likely way Iran could democratize and theories that explain why Iran has persisted as an authoritarian regime. I argue that democracy results from the development of a strong private sector in which economic groups are independent from the state. I go on to provide an in-depth look at how the Iranian government has persisted as an authoritarian regime by thwarting the development of private sector growth and redistributing oil resources to the population. I further explain how President Rouhani's attempt to rescue Iran from the economic crisis created by his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could lead Iran to democratize in the medium-term future by developing a strong private sector. I conclude by summarizing my findings and showing what the implications of a democratic versus an authoritarian Iran would be.Item "I died, still waiting on the truth" : self-identification and communicating personal ethics in the documentaries of exiled Iranian female filmmakers(2015-05) Hunt, Jennifer, M.A. Anne; Atwood, Blake Robert, 1983-; Mulder, StephennieBeginning in the late 1990's and continuing through the first decade of the twenty-first century, an impressive array of documentaries created by a small group of exiled Iranian female documentary filmmakers about issues arising from within Iran's borders became readily available to audiences living in the United States and Europe. While professed and marketed as nuanced and comprehensive documentations of these topics, this cohort of films, in actuality, function on a second plane--one in which filmmakers employ and appropriate filmic representations of the historical world to construct documentaries in which they themselves constitute the actual subjects of the films they create. To illustrate how these filmmakers accomplish this second function, this thesis explores the ways in which documentarists construct various filmic gazes, or ways of seeing, within their films and participate through these gazes in ethical arguments that prioritize a particular way of existing within the historical world they are documenting. Form this analysis, this thesis concludes that exiled female Iranian documentary filmmakers construct various filmic gazes to create documentaries that participate in ethical arguments prioritizing processes of self-identification participated in by the filmmaker and filmic representations of the documentarist's socio-cultural identity over comprehensive documentation of a subject in the historical world.Item Imagining the Modern: An Occidentalist Perception and Representation of Farangi Architecture and Urbanism in 19th-Century Persian Travel Diaries(2014-06-04) Vahdat Zad, VahidThis study explores the inception of modernity in Iran by examining how the built environment was perceived and represented by Iranian travelers visiting Europe in the mid-19th century. Recent scholarship on modernity in non-Western societies unsettles Euro-centric assumptions that depicted the global circulation of architecture as one way transit between the center and the periphery, the original and the copy. Taking part in questioning this uni-directional cultural dissemination, my project reverses the Orientalist gaze of Postcolonial theories. Here, I discuss how the Iranian traveler constructed tajaddod (Iranian experience of modernity) based on an ?Occidentalist? imagery. Many modern institutions and architectural typologies were first introduced to Iran by travelers who visited Europe. These individuals, following a long-standing Persian tradition of travel writing, often kept notes and diaries known as safarnameh. For the purposes of my research, safarnameh serve as non-participant recordings of how Iranians responded to the unfamiliar architectural landscape of the West. To investigate how the message of European modernity was transformed by the travelers, I examine the differences between the descriptions of architecture in each safarnameh and the more prosaic perceptions of those spaces in the Western imagination. I look closely at the literary styles, figures of speech, settings, imagery, symbolism, exaggerations, narrative devices, and tones used by the Iranian writers in their interpretation of European architecture and urban facilities. This study reveals how non-European imaginations, aspirations, fantasies, and agency were a vital part of the transnational dialectic of modernity. By projecting their own Persian/Islamic ideals and imagery onto their observations, these travelers developed a syncretic understanding of modernity. Their encounter with a pre-imagined Western ?Other? became the foundation of tajaddod. When Iran?s experience of modernity is presented as a distorted copy of a Western phenomenon, Iranian architects are alienated from their heritage. They are presented with a false choice between (Persian) tradition and (Western) modernity. My project emphasizes that the Iranian desire towards a modern utopia is not radically alien to Persian/Islamic tradition. This approach advances humanities research by revisiting genealogical notions of a mythical original modernity by unraveling global entanglements.Item Iranian-Israeli relations in light of the Iranian Revolution(2010-12) Vessali, Behrang Vameghi; Aghaie, Kamran Scot; Pedahzur, AmiThis thesis considers the transformation of Iranian-Israeli ties following the 1979 Iranian Revolution from a Western-allied relationship to a covert, scandalous relationship, specifically in the context of the Iran-Iraq War. I also look at the Iranian and Israeli narratives and compare the religious, historical, ideological and psycho-political underpinnings that reveal significant similarities between these two superficially diametrically opposed states, and ultimately shaped the complex and misunderstood relationship between the two countries.Item On the Dialectic of Silence: Klee, Kahn, and the Space of Transversal Modernity in Iran(2013-12-09) Baradaran Mohajeri, ShimaThis dissertation connects the cultural theory of space with specific aesthetic and architectural practices in the history of modernism that are entangled with the past and present of Iran, its artifacts, and its politics. As a response to different forms of alienation and despair symptomatic of Iran?s unfinished modernization plans throughout the twentieth century, this study reveals proposals for possible changes to the global ethics and language of space and Iran?s socio-cultural modernization through overlooked sources in this context: Paul Klee?s Miniature series (1916-1918) and Louis Kahn?s unrealized master plan for the New Civic Center in Tehran (1973-1974). The first part of this study outlines the condition of globalism and its new coordinates with reference to the spatial theories of the later Heidegger and Deleuze. It then focuses on Klee?s narrative of spatiality as a result of his critical engagement with Persian miniatures. Through his Miniature series and the Twittering Machine, Klee maps an archeological analysis that identifies certain historical shifts in the Iranian discursive language of space, a shift into the machinic sensibility that poses a critique to pure ?representation? and the hierarchical model of space. This dissertation further looks at Kahn?s proposal for the Tehran Civic Center that was the site of intense struggle between centers of power and culture in Iran. Kahn?s democratic layout for a modern urban space in the heart of the Iranian metropolis suggests an indirect resistance to ?authority? in the form of a politicized and institutionalized culture and identity. This analysis reveals the works of Klee and Kahn as silent, invisible practices: while Klee opts under the pressure of a rising nationalism to cover up his Persian sources, Kahn?s democratic blueprint is excluded and erased by a successive pseudo-developer. This study argues that these tragic encounters of modernity with cultural place are not signs of failure, but rather can be understood as political practices that form the promise of a new reality, a new ethos as the intensive globalism yet to come. Through an engagement with the later Heidegger, Deleuze, Klee, and Kahn, this dissertation offers the theory of ?transversality? as a silent political and ethical attitude of modernity that encounters every place in its living conditions of multiplicity, simultaneity, and movement and within the real, contingent effects of identity, representation, and authority.Item On witnessing : postwar cinema in Iran and Lebanon(2013-08) Kim, Somy; Ghanoonparvar, M. R. (Mohammad R.); Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; El-Ariss, Tarek; Ali, Samer; Ramirez-Berg, Charles; Aghaie, KamranThis dissertation examines the particularly dynamic postwar cinema of Iran and Lebanon (1988-2007). Through a comparative approach, I consider the cinematic narratives that emerged from this critical period of national reconstruction in these two Middle Eastern countries. I argue that the precarious condition of the postwar, globalizing period allowed the untold stories of class and gender for instance, to appear from within the fabric of the discourse of war storytelling in particular ways. By comparing these two contexts I am able to draw from a shared visuality, and specifically the visual trope of the martyr that was popularized in Iran and Lebanon in the war periods. In Chapter One I trace the formidable production of the visual rhetoric of war in Iran and Lebanon through posters and cinema. In Chapter Two I highlight the emergence of an auteur filmmaking of the globalizing period in the Middle East, which emphasized the instability of representation and ‘true’ witnessing. In Chapter Three, I argue that an aesthetics of performing witnessing illuminated the class issues troubling cities like Tehran and Beirut. Finally, in Chapter Four I show how the generic conventions of popular genres like comedy and musical allowed for otherwise controversial social issues to be articulated in war films.Item Repatriation and state reconstruction : tracing the agency of Afghan returnees in the face of human insecurity(2015-05) Wojdyla, Stella Maria; Hindman, Heather; Miller, PaulSince the beginnings of the Afghan refugee crisis, aid agencies have provided consistent and substantial relief to Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. However, the response was framed by the assumption that mostly short-term humanitarian aid is re-quired because refugees will return to Afghanistan once the conflict ends. This report challenges the "conflict-refugee" concept by focusing on refugee agency in the face of human insecurity and the complexity of Afghan population movements, which include transnational networks, mixed migration, and hybrid identities. The discussion concentrates on the period from 2002 to 2005, when UNHCR facilitated sizable surges of voluntary returns while the Afghan state was still in the initial reconstruction phase. Regardless of UNHCR's repatriation program, the refugee crisis persisted as a significant number of repatriates decided to return to Pakistan and Iran or cross the border repeatedly. To explain the causes and consequences of this phenomenon of refugee backflows, I offer the following argument: The backflow of repatriated refu-gees consisted of both voluntary and forced migrants. Voluntary migrants continued ex-isting practices of circular migration to pursue their preferred livelihood strategies. Forced migrants, however, responded to human insecurity in Afghanistan with migratory coping strategies as their only available form of agency. This distinction has several implications for future reconstruction and repatriation efforts: On the one hand, reconstruction plans should integrate the potential constructive effects of voluntary migration. These effects include remittances, the transfer of human capital, as well as the reduction of pressures on the labor market, infrastructures and so-cial services in the transitional state. On the other hand, UNHCR should only facilitate repatriation once a minimum level of human security on all levels is guaranteed to ensure safe and dignified returns and prevent continued forced migration.Item When heaven fell : the development of "Paradisia"(2011-08) Nourbakhsh, Armineh; Kelban, Stuart; Thorne, Beau“Paradisia” is a feature screenplay that is set in Iran during the opening days of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. It follows the story of a young couple in a war-torn border town, who, accompanied reluctantly by a random stranger, set off to bury the girl’s deceased father before they leave the city. This document is a report on the process of the development of the script, from the conception of its original idea, to the formulation of its plot, characters and structure, based on my sources of research and inspiration. It offers a brief account of the events of the first days of war, and compares and contrasts it to what I have chosen to portray in the script. It also lays out the major plot and character flaws of the original draft of the story, as were pointed out by my supervisor and readers, and demonstrates how I have attempted to address each one of them in order to improve the composition of my characters, the organization of the plot, and the consistency of the story’s structure.Item Why the Iranian Revolution was nonviolent : internationalized social change and the iron cage of liberalism(2010-05) Ritter, Daniel Philip; Charrad, M. (Mounira); Kurtz, Lester R.From angry torch-swinging Parisians attacking the Bastille and Russian workers rising up against the Tsar to outraged Chinese peasants exacting revenge on their landlords and Cuban guerrillas battling Batista’s army, revolutions without violence have in the past been near inconceivable. But when unarmed Iranians after an extended popular struggle forced Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the last king of Iran, to flee Tehran on January 16, 1979, they had gifted the world a new and seemingly paradoxical phenomenon: a nonviolent revolution. Far from a historical oddity, such revolutions have since occurred on almost every continent. Over the past thirty years the function of guerrilla tactics, military coups, and civil war has increasingly been replaced by demonstrations, boycotts, and strikes. How can social scientists account for this “evolution of revolution” that have so altered the appearance of the phenomenon that by Arendt’s definition events in places like Iran, the Philippines, Chile, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine may not even qualify as revolutions? Yet, the popular overthrows of authoritarian regimes in each and every one of those countries were nothing less than revolutionary. The dissertation seeks to understand this recent development in the nature of revolutions by historically examining the phenomenon’s signal case, the Iranian Revolution. The core question asked is: what are the structural and historical forces that caused the Iranian Revolution to be the world’s first nonviolent revolution? The central argument is that both the emergence and success of the nonviolent Iranian Revolution can be explained by its internationalization. In other words, the Iranian Revolution turned out to be successfully nonviolent because, unlike previous revolutions, it was a global affair in which the revolutionaries intentionally and strategically sought to bring the world into their struggle against the state. Indirectly, the aim of this study is to generate the genesis of a theoretical framework that can explain more broadly the emergence and success of nonviolent revolutions in the late 1970s and beyond.