Hassanzadeh, A. (2019). An Anthropological Reflection on Discursive Meanings of “Shahre-e-Ghese”(Lit. The City of Stories) Performance Composed by Bizhan Mofid. Sociological Cultural Studies, 10(3), 101-132. (original) (raw)
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Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 2018
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Sociological Reading of the Play “New Governors”, Written by Moayed-Ol-Mamalek Fekri Ershad
Bagh-e Nazar, 2021
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Literary Reflection of Tehran as a Cultural Landscape
Linguistic and cultural landscape: At the crossroads of research paradigms , 2021
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Global Language Review, 2021
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2018
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The Poetics of Istanbul: The City of Cities
A Companion to Early Modern Istanbul, 2021
Early modern Istanbul is, in a very real, non-hyperbolic, and non-metaphoric sense, a city defined, organized, and made meaningful by poetry.1 Every era is marked by many hundreds of elite poets-poets of sufficient stature to warrant their inclusion in the Ottoman "biographies of poets" (şuʿarā teẕkireleri) literature-and these poets are only the visible surface of a many-times larger pool of not-quite-elite poets of several kinds. In the 15th and 16th centuries, and long after, poetry was produced among popular versifiers, dervish lodge poets, and musicians-from court musicians to mystics and coffeehouse minstrels.2 Sultans and soldiers, bureaucrats and courtiers, viziers, high officials, shopkeepers, religious dignitaries, institutional sufis, and scruffy deviantrejectionist mystics: all wrote reams of poems, often collected in volumes (each called a dīvān) containing hundreds and even thousands of poems. Public buildings, facilities, religious edifices, fountains, military buildings, and park and garden pavilions were for the most part adorned with poems by elite poets. Poetry embellished dervish ceremonies, social gatherings, and entertainment at all social levels, not only giving them meaning, but also providing templates for their activities, from conversation and behaviors to food, drink, and expected types of guests.3 In this chapter, we sketch a "poetics" of early modern Istanbul that theorizes, with examples, the way in which Istanbul can be seen as a psychological construct organized and made meaningful by an unusually extensive and intimate engagement with poetry. "Poetics" is the systematizing of the kinds of "making" and "doing" that poetry achieves as it engages in its work in the world.4 Poetics 1 Walter and I worked on this chapter for almost three years. It saddens me that Walter could not see its printed version. It was an honor to collaborate with him. 2 See the chapter in this volume by Behar, which points to the ways in which music and, presumably, the "language" (lyrics) of music transcend class divisions. 3 Andrews, Poetry's Voice, 62-88, 143-74; Andrews & Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds, passim, on entertainments and the sexuality of Ottoman poetry and society and parallels to European social activities. 4 "Poetics", which comprises many theoretical perspectives on what poetry does, has a long and complex history from antiquity to the present day. For an introductory overview, see the article (with bibliography) on "poetics" in Greene et al. (eds.
Contemporary Iranian Dramatist, Eastern Visual Provocation, and Cultural Originality
2018
The necessity of taking refuge in literary productions has been intensified due to the societies’ severe involvement in the features of the modern world. Loss of identity and failure to maintain an integrated self are the repercussions of distancing from humanistic roots. Some attempts in modern art/literature appear to focus more on visual styles to represent the catastrophes of the modern universe and create the needed cultural shock. Contemporary Iranian Dramatist, Ali Rafiee, has chosen to potentialize historically originated texts by visual intensity of various types on stage to help audience develop critical thinking and rehabilitate their identities with the aid of cultural resemblances very akin to universal codes of humanity. Scrutinizing the visual techniques, one may see the footprints of Kabuki and Balinese performances, supporting the idea of the visual communicative power of stage and audience. Consequently, the significance of the study lies in salvaging the universal...
Acta humanitarica academiae Saulensis, 2024
The concept of identity is currently one of the most frequently examined in cultural studies. Identity refers to the identification of an individual with a certain unit based on signs that he/she consciously or subconsciously accepts as his/her own. There are two main currents in identity research; primordialism (essentialist approach) and instrumentalism (constructivist approach). In today’s individualized society, there is a shift in emphasis from primordiality, i.e. from that side of identity that is given, permanent, inherited, fixed, to instrumentality, i.e. to such a basis of identity that a person chooses, creates, or selects. The submitted research focuses on Iranian identity and its reflection in Western literature and the Iranian art of dance. Iran has an exceptional position in its region and influences global events with its policy. The question is what allowed the Persians to remain Persians for more than two and a half millennia. Persian identity is expressed mainly in spiritual power, poetry, and religion. The Persians gave the world poetry, miniatures, and carpets. From the point of view of production prosperity, all useless things. But that’s how they express themselves. They gave the world what did not serve to make life easier but to make it more beautiful (Kapuściński, 2016, p. 153). The empirical part of the research is divided into two parts. In the first part of the research, the authors focus on expressing Iranian identity in their traditional and modern dance. The Persian “classic” is characterized by an expressive movement of the upper part of the body, delicate movements of the shoulders and palms, and eloquent facial expressions. The dance is very poetic and often depicts scenes from Persian poems. The second part of the research focuses on examining how Iranian identity is reflected in Western literature. The study of Iranian identity is based on Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), who is a representative of Iranian anglophone immigrants, as well as on an unintentional tetralogy of novels by Betty Mahmoody, the author of the novels Not without my Daughter (1987) and For the love of a child (1992), her daughter Mahtob, the author of My Name is Mahtob (2013), and Moody, Mahmoody’s ex-husband and Mahtob’s father, the author of Lost without my Daughter (2013). The culture of a nation is expressed in the identity of its inhabitants, and literature and the art of dance contribute to its understanding.