This article will analyze the reflection on the unveiling project in poetry of the late 19th and early 20th century Iran. I argue that the unveiling project did not necessarily serve only women’s emancipation. Such underlying factors as controlling the sexual impulsivity of men, preventing homosexuality, anti-Arab sentiment, and modernization also emerged from this project. Mining the contents of primary sources, I will employ a comparative approach by analyzing the mutual influence of poetry and Qajar narratives pertaining to the issue of the veil. This essay will mainly draw upon poetry composed by Iraj Mirza, Abolqasim Lahuti, Mirzadeh Eshghi, Aref Qazvini, and Zhaleh Ghaemmaghami as well as archival sources such as Sih Maktub and Sad Khatabah by Mirza Aqakhan Kirmani, Maktubat by Mirza Fathali Akhundzadah, and, Masael al-Hayat by Abd al-Rahim Ali Talibuf. There are several reasons why poetry is central. First, although the hijab issue was discussed by numerous writers and activists, poetry as a work of literary art in the history of Iran carries a unique and direct tone of language in expressing certain demands. Indeed, poetry, besides its beauty and calming form, reflects the violence occurring around a poet and can be a tool used to protest against injustice. Poetry holds the power of either mitigating the negativity of social taboos or overemphasizing the logic articulated to support social norms. At the apex of its tone, poetry can utterly flip the long-lasting definition of common concepts by redefining them and presenting a fresh perception of them. In other words, poetry can serve as the revolutionary language of opposition. Second, poetry, unlike some other written genres remained influential in terms of breaking boundaries and bridging the elite class to the uneducated. Third, it is significant to observe poets as leading figures, who did not censor their perspectives due to the tense atmosphere surrounding the issue. Those advocating for unveiling explicitly considered the hijab as a visible symbol of internalized patriarchy. Fourth, poets were among the modernist pioneers who began to change their perspectives towards religious rules, by perceiving them as religious obligations and traps. Reevaluating norms, they detached some deep-rooted concepts from their traditional affiliations and attached a new definition and perspective to them. Lastly, I chose to focus on poetry because the first opposition to veiling was by a female poet, Tahereh Qorrat ol-Eyn (1814 or 1817-1852), who removed her veil and called it an obligation.

In a historiographical study, this paper explores the ways Iranian theater histories engage with the registration and representation of Iranian theater. Prior to the first western forms of theater histories, performance traditions in Iran were mostly recorded in classical poetry, ancient images, or engravings on pottery and canvases. The systematic registration of the tradition appeared nearly a century after the introduction of the western form of theater to Iran in the mid-19th century. The beginning of western theater marked a transition from oral tradition to print theater. This resulted in a typological shift in the existing records and archives on Iranian theater. The refashioning of this transition within the framework of western historiographies has been a challenge to Iranian theater historians since then. This has resulted in various forms of theater histories that while partially stay within the framework of the western theater historiographies, divert from the mandates of the genre. Iranian theater historians, in other words, have formed a hybrid method of a historical narrative to speak to the bifurcated nature of Iranian theater archives. This paper reviews the tradition of these histories written by Iranian theater scholars on the indigenous and western forms of theater. In a reviewal survey, the paper examines the methodological development of the scholarship since the 1960s. The data collected for this purpose is based on the study of 125 histories (in Persian and English) from books to book chapters. These sources are partially or entirely engaged with the records of Iranian theatrical productions. Among these sources are Beiza’i’s A Study of Iranian Theater, Floor’s The History of Theater in Iran, Janti Ata’i’s The Origin of Performance in Iran, Malekpour’s Drama in Iran, and Amjad’s The Rise of the Iranian Theater between 1821 and 1921, to name a few.

Armenians have been an integral part of the Iranian society for centuries but their role as coaches and players that developed western sports, the history of Armenian-only sports teams, and their decades-old crisis after 1979 remain understudied. Hence, the history of Iranian sports remains incomplete. Armenians not only introduced sports such as boxing and soccer to Iran they coached and trained thousands of athletes in tennis and basketball among others. My presentation has two parts: In the first, I argue how Iranian Armenian women and men shaped popular sports in Iran during the secular rule of the Shah. By using field interviews with major figures and analyzing published/unpublished biographies, articles, sports op-eds, and letters/photos from private collections we will understand how the state used western sports and inclusion of Armenian women, especially as a positive step towards state modernization in the 1950s. In the second part, I will discuss how the 1979 revolution, the eight-year war with Iraq, and the economic downturn starting in the late 1990s continuing to now forced Armenians to emigrate in large numbers, which consequently had a devastating impact on Armenian-only sports teams pushing them to the brinks of extinction while leaving a small pool of current coaches and players to represent. Although cultural identity and the fact that Armenians were the only Christian minority did not bare on their participation before 1979 a bifurcated identity crisis because of the policies of the government in one hand, and the Armenian community itself on the other, played a significant role in weakening Armenian presence in the Iranian sports landscape in national and exclusive Armenian teams. In this part, I will analyze print media in which Armenians and sports commentators discuss the Armenian teams unwillingness to allow non-Armenian players when there was a short of Armenian players and the causes of their emigration, which had mostly was economic being cultural/political. My other sources include public records from the Armenian Apostolic Diocese of Isfahan and Southern Iran, and the records from ministries of sports and education. This article will enhance our understanding of Armenian’s role in the development of modernization through sports. Not only will it highlight the role of Armenians in Iranian sports but how Armenians tried to create a distinct identity through establishing all-Armenian teams which in light of increased immigration is under threat of extinction.

Born in the same city, on opposing shores of Istanbul: Zabel opened her eyes to the world in 1878 in Üsküdar, Halide Edib in 1884 in Beşiktaş. Their families were well-respected; Zabel’s in the Armenian community, Halide’s in the Turkish. Having received the best education available to women in the Ottoman Istanbul, Zabel published her first novel in 1907. Halide’s first novel appeared in print two years later, in 1909. Both women were pioneers in their communities writing essays and articles on women’s role in modern society, giving speeches, organizing meetings. They shared a desire to be at the heart of the changing Ottoman world. Such is the tale of prominent Ottoman Turkish figure Halide Edip and the celebrated Armenian writer Zabel Yesayan that began to be circulated in the first few years of the 21st century. It is a legend based on the parallels and similarities between the two women’s lives. A story organized and produced by a small group of Turkish feminists, intellectuals and academics to distance themselves from the official doctrine and discourse in Turkey which denies the Armenian Genocide and to confront the Ottoman past from a new, more responsible perspective. Zabel and Halide whose paths did not cross in the city they were born in, lived in and exiled from are brought together in a “once upon a time in Ottoman Istanbul” tale. This feminist tale of two women wants to remind listeners and readers of the possibilities that existed in the pre-1915 Ottoman world while simultaneously gesturing to the possibilities that feminist history-writing entails: parallel lives, parallel paths, and a sense of sisterhood that grows traversing the Armenian and Turkish woman. Yet the tale does not name the very reason which destroyed the conjuncture possible in the parallel paths Zabel and Halide were taking. In not addressing the Armenian Genocide, this tale reproduces the denialism which it wishes to distance itself from. Reading Zabel and Halide's tale as it fails to comprehend colonialism and genocide, we arrive at agnosia - a neurological condition which makes it difficult to “assemble elements of an image into an understandable whole.” This paper will analyze the feminist nostalgia and colonial agnosia that the modern tale of Zabel and Halide produces with regards to the afterlife of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey.