This paper examines how state and societal institutions in Iran have engaged in cultural production to document and commemorate the Iran-Iraq War and, at the same time, to forge a particular socio-historical consciousness. It focuses particularly on the Center for Holy (Sacred) Defense Documentation and Research (Markaz-i Asn?d-i va Ta?q?q?t-i Dif?’-i Muqaddas) (hereafter: the Center), which was established and is still run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). While analyzing the work of the Center, the paper also examines the significance of the Iran-Iraq War in Iranian society, and how Iranian actors have sought to shape that significance. The Center is one of the most active and prolific research and publication institutions in Iran that focuses specifically on preserving and disseminating the history of the Iran-Iraq War, which is also known as the Holy/Sacred Defense. The work of the Center, however, has largely been overlooked by scholars writing in English, and its significance has therefore remained understudied and underappreciated. Yet, as this paper argues, the work and publications of the Center are of immense value for understanding the importance of both the Iran-Iraq War and the promotion of a particular historical narrative of that conflict. As the critical analysis of the Center’s work presented in the paper reveals, rigorous historical documentation and cultural value promotion are integrated in a manner that reflects the Center’s dual mission and that defies the accepted partition between historical account and cultural narrative. As this paper will also explore, one of the central themes and purposes of the Center’s work is the promotion of a “culture of Sacred (or Holy) Defense” (farhang-i dif?’i muqaddas). In the view of the Center and Iranian leaders, Iran’s ability to survive the eight years of war was an achievement of immense proportions, and one whose lessons should be studied and taught so that they can be applied in the present and future. A key lesson, according to these leaders, was that Iran’s survival depended in large part on the willingness of the Iranian people to defend and become martyrs for the country that was made possible by a combination of revolutionary fervor, religious devotion, and ideological cohesion—by a culture of Sacred Defense. Since the war’s end, promoting this culture has accordingly become critical for ensuring the strength and security of both the state and society.

Based on one year of ethnographic and archival research in Iran, this paper examines the cultural production surrounding a nostalgic, yet ambiguous concept known as “jihadi culture and management”. Fully understanding the concept requires deciphering its organizational antecedents and indigenous conceptions of the term “jihad”. The concept emerged from Construction Jihad, a revolutionary organization that undertook an ambitious development campaign and spread revolutionary and Islamic values to the countryside during the early years of the revolution. In contrast to Western conceptions of “jihad” as exclusively equated with holy war, the term in the organization’s name and as communicated by Imam Khomeini implied a divinely-inspired, collective and individual struggle to improve society and the self through constructive and positive endeavors, such as rural development. The term’s significance and call to action mobilized and motivated the organization’s activists to perform their work in an energetic, committed, altruistic, and sacred manner. These activists worked tirelessly in remote and destitute villages not for material gain, but to channel their revolutionary zeal into productive pursuits and earn spiritual rewards in the afterlife. In more recent years, national elites and civic associations, particularly those affiliated with the revolutionary generation and Construction Jihad, have enthusiastically and systematically promoted “jihadi culture and management” through their discourse, literature, and activities to mitigate the adverse effects of bureaucratization, materialism, and individualism. To this end, this cultural production seeks to re-infuse, reinvigorate, and rejuvenate state and society with revolutionary and religious norms and values. It also endeavors to remind younger generations of the sacrifices that were made and the hardships that were endured during the revolution for the greater good. Finally, this cultural production aspires to encourage contemporary institutions and citizens to emulate and internalize the exemplary and revered spirit and attributes of Construction Jihad as an ideal type organization and its members as archetypal jihadists.

This paper examines public urban spaces as a form of cultural production. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the government's policies have drastically influenced social, political, and cultural relations in Iran. The Islamic values defined by the regime have not only impacted civic laws, but also changed the image of Iranian cities and their spatial relations. Making the Islamic hijab mandatory for women in the public places has led to gender segregation in public spaces such as beaches, city buses, and most recently, urban public parks exclusively for women. Although there are mixed gender parks currently in use in the cities, creating women-only parks reinforces inequality and gender segregation which serve the Islamic Republic’s ideology. I study the process of these spatial changes from a feminist perspective. My main argument is to challenge the mechanisms of urban public spaces after the Islamic Revolution, and the way public spaces have become gendered in the name of “revitalization” of the Islamic culture. This paper also examines the Iranian women’s struggle over their rights to the urban spaces. This research explores two important phenomena. First, it examines how the moral codes defined by the Islamic Republic, such as compulsory hijab, result in gender segregation and reproduction of patriarchal patterns; and second, it explores a paradigm in which the appearance of women in the streets has been transformed into a language that challenges the dominant governmental power, resists ideological policies of the government, and produces a form of social discourse. The major questions posed in this research are: 1. How do the Islamic Republic policies produce urban spaces, which embody and perpetuate patriarchal culture? 2. How do Iranian women’s reactions produce a source of power to challenge the Islamic government?

This paper examines the major discourses on the interpretation and reception of Western art in Iran during the final years of the Pahlavi regime and the specific historical, cultural, and political conditions surrounding the construction of the Tehran Museum of Modern Art (now known as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art), designed by the Iranian architect Kahmran Diba in 1977. Built within the Laleh Park complex—the site of bloody clashes between revolutionary protestors, anti-Pahlavi groups, and the Iranian government during the Islamic Revolution of 1979—the Tehran Museum of Modern Art remains a fraught public symbol, operating simultaneously as a site of Western influence, Pahlavi decadence, and revolutionary history. At the same time, the museum is well-known internationally for its rich holdings of American and European 20th-century modern art, including major works by the Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and the American Pop artist Andy Warhol. Bought for the museum by Farah Pahalvi, the ousted shah’s influential twin sister, over the course of the 1970s, this collection of Western art functions as a material time-capsule of significant American and European avant-garde modes of artistic experimentation prominent in the 1950s and 1960s—but the values, ideas, and aesthetic of this collection clash starkly with the cultural and social mandates of post-revolutionary Iran. Given its blatant incompatibility with religious norms and values, why has the Islamic Republic continued to protect this collection? As this paper argues, Iran’s protection of this collection reveals larger ideological struggles over the meaning and control over the historical and political legacy of the revolution, as well as the country’s conflicted interest in engaging the attention of the international contemporary art world. As the recent cancellations of major international exchanges and long-term exhibition projects between the Tehran Museum and other European art institutions eager to collaborate with Iranian artists suggest, questions of whether and how Iran engages with the outside world still persist. This paper will shape an understanding of The Tehran Museum as a microcosm for these continuing political and cultural struggles.