First European Round Table on Modern Persian Literature
The Round Table is organised in cooperation with the laboratoire CERMOM (Centre de Recherches Moyen-Orient et Méditérranée) of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO, Paris), by Julie Duvigneau, Goulia Ghardashkhani and Christoph U. Werner.
Modern Persian literature in all major genres — prose, poetry, drama, criticism, etc. — has been written and read in Iran since the early twentieth century. Despite a vibrant production field, modern Persian literature remains widely understudied, due to a lack of institutional foundations both inside and outside of Iran. Inside Iran, modern literature has always been regarded as a potential subversive threat, both during the Pahlavi period for its supposed leftist and oppositional tendencies, and after the revolution as a challenge to Islamist ideologies. Outside of Iran, modern literature has rarely found its place inside Oriental Studies departments and has been in competition with classical Persian literature that lends itself better to diasporic identity building.
The first European Round Table on Modern Persian Literature aims to address this dual predicament in the study and reception of modern and contemporary Persian literature. Regarding institutional infrastructure, it intends to identify researchers and research locations in Europe (and beyond) and establish networks to facilitate publications, teaching, mobility, and joint projects. The European context allows easier personal contacts, but also an awareness of Persian literature in a multilingual setting and the need for multi-language translations (in French, English, German, Italian, Swedish, etc.). Concerning research focus and methodology, the goal is to bring into attention works, topics, and critical approaches that challenge and pluralize the present understanding of modern Persian/Iranian literary system and ultimately help to re-conceptualize its development within a trans-periodic and trans-cultural model.
Program | First European Round Table on Modern Persian Literature (as of 18. June 2024)
4–7 July 2024, Bamberg
Thursday, 4 July | ||
18:15 – 19:30 | Marta Simidchieva | Keynote: Sadeq Hedayat and Europe: A Modernist among Modernists |
19:30 | Reception Dinner | |
Friday, 5 July | ||
10:00 – 10:30 | Welcome and Opening Remarks | |
Panel I: Beasts and Boundaries Chair: Yuriko Yamanaka | ||
10:30 – 11:00 | Emil Madsen Brandt (K?benhavn) | Bijan Mofid’s Jān Nesār: An Irreverent Exploration of Autocracy’s Absurdities |
11:00 – 11:30 | Julie Duvigneau (Paris) | Werewolves and the Walking Dead, Metamorphosis in Contemporary Iranian Prose |
11:30 – 12:00 | Amir Moosavi (Newark, NJ) | After Piruz: Leopards and Humans in Three Texts |
12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch Break | |
Panel II: Genres and Reception Chair: Julie Duvigneau | ||
14:00 – 14:30 | Mario Casari (Roma) | How Should We Understand Children’s Literature? The Translators’ Voice |
14:30 – 15:00 | Giacomo Longhi (Roma) | Modern Persian Literature: a New Space in the Italian Book Market (1998-2024) |
15:00 – 15:30 | Natalia Tornesello (Napoli) | Le Petit Prince in Iran: Shamlu’s Translation |
15:30 – 16:00 | Coffee Break | |
Panel III: Inside Out, Outside In Chair: Dina Khazai | ||
16:00 – 16:30 | Belgheis Jafari (Paris) | Representations of Homeland in Modern Afghan Literature |
16:30 – 17:00 | Anna Chiara Martire (Roma) | The Transnational Iranian-Afghan Literature. The Narratives of ‘?liye ‘A?āyi and Mo?ammad ?oseyn Mo?ammadi as a Case Study |
17:00 – 17:30 | Leila Rahimi Bahmany (Utrecht) | Turkophobia in Modern Persian Poetry |
Dinner | ||
Saturday, 6 July | ||
Panel IV: Intertextualities Chair: Mario Casari | ||
10:00 – 10:30 | Anna Krasnowolska (Kraków) | Obsessive Topics, Wandering Motifs and Intertextuality in Modern Persian Prose |
10:30 – 11:00 | Dina Khazai (Strasbourg) | Towards a Surrealist Mysticism: from Xorus jangi to Abutorab Khosravi |
11:00 – 11:30 | Renata Rusek-Kowalska (Kraków) | Reciprocal Relationship of Modern and Classical Persian Literature with a Focus on Hushang Golshiri’s Fiction |
11:30 – 12:00 | Shafigheh Keivan (Paris) | Literary Re-appropriation of Persian Classical Motifs and the Formation of the Modern Subject: The Aesthetics of the Narrative in the Selected Works of Hedayat, Golshiri and Alizadeh |
12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch Break | |
Panel V: Women, Women Chair: Christine K?mpfer | ||
14:00 – 14:30 | Rita H?ring (Bamberg) | You Are Like a Half-Cooked Crab on a Plate: Women Writing Men in Persian Web Novels |
14:30 – 15:00 | Laetitia Nanquette (Sydney) | Women Publishers in Post-revolutionary Iran: Gender, Ideology and the State |
15:00 – 15:30 | Leila Samadi Rendy (Freiburg) | Body Space in the Literature of Iranian Women from Goharshad Riot to ‘Women Life Freedom’ Revolt |
15:30 – 16:00 | Coffee Break | |
Panel VI: Times and Spaces Chair: Laetitia Nanquette | ||
16:00 – 16:30 | Christoph U. Werner (Bamberg) | Writing the Revolution : The Exile Perspective in ?Abbās Ma?rufi’s Fereydun seh pesar dāsht |
16:30 – 17:00 | Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (Utrecht) | Of Simurgh and the Raven: Ma?mūd Mas?ūdī’s Sūrat al-Ghurāb |
17:00 – 17:30 | Goulia Ghardashkhani (Bamberg) | Grey Histories, Uncharted Narratives: Post-revolutionary Iran and Its Ambiguities in Zakariya Qa?emi’s Alabula (Hazy) (2020) |
17:30 – 18:00 | Closing Remarks | |
Dinner | ||
Sunday, 7 July | |
10:30 – | Bamberg Tour |