Re-Thinking Iran: CLCWeb thematic issue

Massih Zekavat Announcement
Location
Indiana, United States
Subject Fields
Area Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Humanities, Literature, Middle East History / Studies

Re-Thinking Iran

 

Hijab, censorship, a chauvinistic sense of superiority over Arabs, an ancient culture, the monumental Persepolis, clerics, the Islamic Revolution. The grid is probably enough to bring Iran into public or even scholarly mind in the contemporary world. But does this picture do justice to this nation-state and its diversity of cultures? Besides a psychological desire and a quest for the exotic, discursive representations and stereotypes have shaped the occidental understanding of the orient and the global conceptualization of Iran.

In a conversation with the CLCWeb editor, Ari Ofengenden, we agreed that critical theory must seriously broaden its scope to include alternative non-Eurocentric perspectives. Iran would be one place to look for this alternative outlook. As it arises from a specific, though contingent, context, however, (literary) theory cannot be treated as if it exists in a vacuum. That is one reason why its travels are not necessarily guaranteed to always cause brilliant results. Accordingly, for a thematic issue of CLCWeb, we are interested in articles that freshly remap the contemporary Iranian literature, culture and its pedigree, and contextualize and (re-)interpret it in its broader national and transnational context. The issue intends to surprise the world by providing a fresh and unexpected picture of Iran as located in comparative literature and cultural studies.

We like to receive different and opposing views in order to be able to represent the diversity of the Iranian situation and shatter the homogeneous, essentialist stereotype that has impeded a full appreciation of the country and its local and global relationships in a world infested with wars, terrorism, (forced) (im)migrations, displacement, global inequalities and asymmetries, and climate change, among others. Such a rethinking will hopefully contribute to the establishment of more constructive relationships between the world and Iran.

We kindly invite you to send your papers to zekavat@yazd.ac.ir and massihzekavat@gmail.com by November 2017. The thematic issue is aimed for June 2018. Please prepare your manuscript according to CLCWeb Style Guide and CLCWeb Best Practices.

 

 

 

P.S.:

UNIVERSITY PRESS
<http://www.thepress.purdue.edu>

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

ISSN 1481-4374 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb>
Purdue University Press ©Purdue University

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (1999-), the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access humanities and social sciences quarterly, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles in regular, thematic, and special issues, review articles of scholarly books, and research material in its Library Series.

Publications in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI-AHCI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, & Scopus (Elsevier).

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture is member of The Council of Editors of Learned Journals & it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. The journal is archived in the Electronic Collection of Library and Archives Canada & in the Portico & CLOCKSS systems for archival preservation of born-digital scholarly content.

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies.

 

Contact Email
zekavat@yazd.ac.ir