Dans l’espace des savoirs sur l’Iran, les énoncés concernant sa dimension religieuse ne sont pas rares. Au contraire, cet espace déborde de travaux qui ont, soit la religion pour objet principal d’analyse, soit une place primordiale pour la religion en en faisant le facteur par excellence de la compréhension de la société, de la culture et de la politique iraniennes. Reconnu en tant qu’une tradition spirituelle, ésotérique et mystique de l’islam dans la période de l’institutionnalisation des études iraniennes, en France, le chiisme fait objet de controverses intellectuelles après sa mise en action par les révolutionnaires de 1978-1979 et l’instauration de la République islamique d’Iran. Dépassant les cadres interprétatifs sclérosés de la connaissance du chiisme par les philosophes, les spécialistes des sciences religieuses et ceux de la civilisation iranienne, ce sont désormais les praticiens en sciences sociales qui prennent le relais pour la formation des discours scientifiques à ce sujet. Cette bifurcation d’objet, liée autant aux faits qu’aux orientations épistémiques, didactiques et idéologiques, va de pair avec l’agir de la conjoncture sociopolitique sur les conditions de possibilité du savoir pour que la problématisation de la question du chiisme constitue un éventail difficile et imprévisible. En partant d’une approche constructiviste, cette thèse entend donner à voir les composants scientifiques mais aussi extrascientifiques qui orientent la problématisation du chiisme dans l’espace des savoirs sur l’Iran en France de 1947 à 2010. / Since the establishment of renewed Iranian Studies in Post-War period, the academic study of Iran has been growing abundantly in France. In this scientific space of knowledge, the question of “shi’isme” has been evoked prominently through philosophical and spiritual patterns since it became more controversial after the revolution of 1979 and the revival of “shi’isme” as an ideological mean of defying the imperial regime. This led to an epistemological and institutional rupture related to different theoretical and methodological patterns within disciplines and thought systems associated with the construction of “shi’isme” as an object of scientific enquiries. The rise of intellectual controversies between spiritual and historicized frameworks that oriented the production of discourses on “shi’isme” challenges the scientific and epistemological patterns of knowledge construction, as well as ideological and socio-political ones. This study attempts to provide a constructivist approach to the advent and the evolution of scientific discourses on “shi’isme” in France from 1947 to 2010, through a socio-historical viewpoint of the sociology of knowledge. Institutional patterns, epistemological criteria and sociological components will be put together to illustrate a comprehensive mapping of discourse structuration on “shi’isme” in the French space of knowledge on Iran.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a distinct female voice has emerged in Persian fictional literature which has ventured beyond the established feminine stereotype of male literary tradition, and remarkably valorized female identities through focusing on interests and concerns of Iranian women, from feminist issues to social and political problems to cultural and moral dilemmas. This body of literature that has been gradually developed, tries to reflect realistic depictions of female protagonists with emotional, intellectual, and moral complexity. To study this progressive process, this research has focused on characterization of seven female protagonists that have been created by different generations of Iranian female authors in the genre of novel.

In the Path of the Prophet: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Life of Zarathustra in Islamic Iran and Western India is a historical study of the discursive practices by which Zoroastrians struggled to define their communal identity through constructions of the central figure of their religion. I argue that Zoroastrians adopted cosmopolitan religious vocabularies from the Islamicate and Sanskritic literary traditions for a world in which they were no longer a dominant political force. Contrary to much scholarship, which characterizes medieval Zoroastrian thought as stagnant, I contend that literary production in this period reveals extraordinary intellectual engagement among Zoroastrians endeavoring to make meaning of their ancient religious traditions in a rapidly changing world. The essays of my dissertation focus on four moments in Zoroastrian intellectual history. I begin with an analysis of the thirteenth century Persian Zarātushtnāma (The Book of Zarathustra), examining interactions between Zoroastrian theology and prophetology and contemporary Islamic thought, focusing on the role that miracles played in medieval Zoroastrian conceptions of prophethood. In my next essay, I explore questions of identity, orthodoxy and heterodoxy by investigating a group of Zoroastrian mystics who migrated from Safavid Persia to Mughal India around the seventeenth century. Influenced by the Illuminationist school of Islamic philosophy, they left behind a body of texts which blur religious boundaries. In my third essay, I examine the earliest literary compositions in the Gujarati language about the life of Zarathustra, employing theoretical discussions of literary cosmopolitanism and vernacularization to trace how Zoroastrian stories were reimagined by Indian Zoroastrians (Parsis) to fit Indo-Persian and Sanskritic discursive conventions. Finally, I look at the ways in which Zoroastrian prophetology was transformed through the experience of colonial modernity, focusing especially on the role of the printing press and the creation of a literate public sphere. I argue that the formation of a Parsi colonial consciousness was an experience of loss and recovery, in which traditional Persianate forms of knowledge were replaced by newly introduced sciences of philology, ethnology, and archaeology, fundamentally reshaping the Parsi conception of their religion and religious boundaries. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

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Russia and Iran have been subject to mutual influence since the reign of Shah Abbas I (1588-1629). For most of the time this relationship was not one of equals: since the early nineteenth century and lasting at least until 1946, Russia and then the USSR, in strong competition with Britain, had been gradually, and for the most part steadily, increasing its political, cultural and economic influence within Iran up to very high levels. Nevertheless, the history of Russian/Soviet-Iranian relations still remains understudied, particularly in English-language scholarship. One of the main reasons for this gap must be sought in the hampered access of Western researchers to Russian archives during the Soviet time, which made them draw on Russian-language literature, traditionally pre-occupied with the history of social movements, and with the mechanical retelling of political and economic processes. Thus the cultural and political ties of the two countries on institutional and individual levels (especially during the period surrounding 1917), the influence of Russia, and then of the USSR, on Iran and vice versa, in political, economic and cultural spheres through the activities of individuals, as well as the methods and tools used by the “Big Northern neighbour” during the execution of its foreign policy towards Iran did not receive proper attention, and thus lack detailed analysis. This research addresses the lack of detailed analysis of the power/knowledge nexus in relation to Russia’s Persian/Iranian Studies – the largest and most influential sub-domain within Russia’s Oriental Studies during the late Imperial and the early Soviet periods. The specific focus of this study is the involvement of Russian ‘civilian’ (academic) and ‘practical’ (military officers, diplomats, and missionaries) Persian Studies scholarship in Russian foreign policy towards Persia/Iran from the end of the nineteenth century up to 1941 – a period witnessing some of the most crucial events in the history of both countries. It is during this period that Persia/Iran was the pivot of Russia’s Eastern foreign policy but at the same time almost every significant development inside Russia as well as in her Western policies also had an immediate impact on this country – the state of affairs that ultimately culminated in the second Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941. My thesis is based on extensive research in eleven important political, military and academic archives of Russia and Georgia, which allowed me to consult a significant amount of hitherto unpublished, often still unprocessed and only recently declassified, primary sources. While engaging with notions such as Orientalism, my analysis aims at transcending Edward Said’s concept of a mere complicity of knowledge with imperial power. My theoretical approach builds on Michel Foucault’s conceptualisation of the interplay of power/knowledge relations, his notion of discourse, and his writings on the role of the intellectual. While demonstrating the full applicability of the Foucauldian model to the Russian case through the study of the power/knowledge nexus in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia’s Persian Studies, or Iranology, I focus on the activities of scholars and experts within their own professional domains and analyse what motivated them and how their own views, beliefs and intentions correlated with their work, how their activities were influenced by the hegemonic discourses within Russian society. I analyse the interaction of these intellectuals with state structures and their participation in the process of shaping and conducting foreign policy towards Iran, both as part of the Russian scholarly community as a whole and as individuals on the personal level. For the first time my work explores at such level of detail the specific institutional practices of Russia’s Oriental Studies, including the organisation of scholarly intelligence networks, the taking advantage of state power for the promotion of institutional interests, the profound engagement with Russia’s domestic and foreign policy discourses of the time, etc. In addition, the thesis presents a detailed assessment of the organisation of Iranology as a leading sub-domain within the broader scholarly field of Oriental Studies in the period from the end of the nineteenth century to 1941 and analyses the principles and mechanisms of its involvement in Russia’s foreign policy towards Persia/Iran.

<p>This investigation into the status of English in Iran and cultural presentations in Iranian English has two areas of emphasis. The first is a sociolinguistic profile of English in Iran in which the status, functions, uses and users of this language are described within in the country’s social and political contexts. In this part, contributing factors to the growth of English in three political periods, including the Qajar dynasty (1796 -1925), the Pahlavi era (1925-1979) and post-Revolutionary time (1979 – present), are elaborated upon to establish the historical and political bases for the second area of focus.</p> <p>The second focus is the cultural content in the locally developed English textbooks used from 1939 to the present time (2020). Accordingly, the content of four generations (across five textbook series) of Iranian high school English textbooks are analyzed based on an evaluation scheme which the author has developed. This research finds answers to the questions on the status of culture in the Iranian English textbooks; distribution of Iranian and non-Iranian cultures; dominance of cultural elements (products, practices and perspectives) in each English textbooks series; and the political and ideological influence of each era on the content of English textbooks.</p> <p>This investigation finds that the English textbooks which were developed before the Islamic Revolution (first and second generations) were highly cultural compared to the post-Revolution materials (third and fourth generations). Also, non-Iranian cultural components (particularly the American and British cultures) were more represented in the English textbooks of the Pahlavi period, whereas Western cultures were all eliminated in the post-Revolution textbooks, replaced by the Islamic/Revolutionary cultures. Additionally, cultural perspectives outnumbered cultural products and practices in the first and second generations of English textbooks (Pahlavi era) whereas cultural products dominated the post-Revolutionary English materials. This study finds that political and ideological hegemony of each era have directly influenced the textual and illustrative content of locally developed English textbooks in Iran.<a> </a></p>