Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1928-1990) is one of the most important figures in modern Persian literature. However, his poetry is little known in the West. Even in Iran, though held in high regard, his work is considered hermetic. There is no unambiguous message, no identifiable political or aesthetic doctrine. Still, his poems exert a strange, haunting power. What do they tell us, now, two decades after the poet's death? What do they mean outside their homeland? What is their voice in world literature? These are the questions my dissertation seeks to answer. Chapters on rhythm, metaphor, time and - lyrical and epic - voice aim to place Akhavan in the comparative context of the 20th century literary movements. Following the philosophical hermeneutics of, above all, Paul Ricoeur, I attempt to tease out layers of meaning and bring Akhavan's poems to life for a contemporary reader. Aspects of time and presence throughout serve to structure my argument. In parallel, time and presence are traced as motifs that weave through Akhavan's writing. Through close readings of a wide range of poems I seek to understand Akhavan's texts as crystallisations of a historical moment. However, I also argue that his poems can no longer be explained within the linear evolution of Persian literary history: in their language and imagery, they point to an elsewhere that has not yet been mapped. Akhavan avoids ideological statements and political imperatives. All the same, an ethical stance is manifest in his poetry. Form itself takes on significance. Chapter 1 examines how Ahkavan makes the human time of rhythm converge with the time of the poem. Chapter 2 explores how definitions of metaphor affect the belief in literature's potential to describe and refigure reality. Chapter 3 elucidates the processes by which time is imagined as an unattainable space. Hope and desire belong elsewhere, as does salvation. Chapter 4 treats the genres of lyric and epic as distinct configurations of time. Akhavan's love poetry is a poetry of absence, reaching out to an elusive Other, while his narrative poems adumbrate the possibility of a different, gladder history in the interstices of language.

During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Iraqi Baʿth party engaged in the production of historical narrative, which defined the party's ideal of Iraqi nationality and statehood, while promoting the legitimacy of its military efforts. Public intellectuals played an important role in the manufacture of such historical narrative. This thesis examines two works produced in the service of this project, Al-Ṣirāʿal-ʿIrāqiyy Fārisiyy, or "The Iraqi-Persian Conflict," and Tārīkh al-Munāzaʿāt wa-l-Ḥurūb Bayn al-ʿIrāq waʾĪrān, or "The History of the Conflicts and Wars Between Iraq and Iran." It will be demonstrated that these works reflected, and rarified a wartime nationalist discourse permeating the public sphere, in which an ideal of Iraqi nationality and statehood was defined through the demonization of an essentialist Persian other. Pre-Islamic and medieval Islamic history was employed to emphasize episodes of violence and cultural conflict between Iraqis and Iranians, in doing so illustrating the characteristics of both peoples. Iraqi nationality was defined as embodying superlative qualities of governance, military prowess, cultural achievement, and religiosity. Iraqi nationhood was defined and elevated in contrast to an opposite, malicious Persian nationality, rooted in anti-Arab hostility and characterized by inferiority in piety, culture, leadership, and warfare. Direct parallels existed between this nationalist narrative, and public sphere expressions of Baʿthist nationalist discourse, such as government statements, school textbooks, and monument construction.

This study focuses on the musical activities and views of Iranian immigrant artists who perform, teach, and support traditional Iranian music in Los Angeles and Southern California. This geographic area and its interconnected social networks, which I refer to as Irangeles, is part of a diaspora culture industry where music is central to everyday life, but where modern Iranian pop music dominates. Given Iran's historical negative stigma attached to entertainment-oriented music making, and the popularity of entertainment and dance-driven Persian pop in contemporary Irangeles, practitioners of traditional Iranian music express frustration and face challenges in promoting their art, what they feel is an authentic form of Iranian culture. The music they make expresses both personal and cultural values: it is a form of creative expression that presents itself as interwoven with their Iranian identity, reflecting personal and cultural ideals of character in Iranian culture. My findings highlight how Iranian immigrant artists avail themselves of the socio-cultural infrastructure of Irangeles to network with like-minded artists and strategically use satellite TV, online technology and social media to find recognition for, teach, and promote diverse genres of traditional Iranian music in this particular diaspora setting.

This thesis analyzes the unexplored space that Iranian expatriates occupy in Persian Gulf Arab States, specifically Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. It argues that culturally ascribed markers such as ethnicity, language, clothing, gender, religion, historical factors and nationality combine to produce hybrid Gulf Iranian identities among Iranian expatriates. The thesis performs an analysis of Iranian expatriate individuals' situations and conditions in the above societies and assesses the level of cross-interaction between Arabs and Iranians by building upon theories by Martinez, Hegel, Hobsbawm and Said. It concludes that studies of Iranian expatriates may not be performed in terms of Iranian or Gulf Arab identities but as a fluid synthesis of the two with sociopolitical implications for all Persian Gulf States. By understanding the Gulf Iranian expatriate community, or Gulf Iranians, we can move beyond analyses that are limited to national, ethnic and ideological lines to reevaluate Persian Gulf identities entirely.

This study aims to investigate how, in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721), religion and religious structures are presented to influence women’s position in French society. In Persian Letters Montesquieu presents a dogmatic religious life, which proceed from a literal interpretation of the bible. Such a reading raises critical questions concerning the nature of women, and subsequently places man over woman. Persian Letters show how this male dominance gets institutionalized in marriage. The religious life depicted is also distinguished by a non-genuine religious conviction and by acts which take on a simulation form. The compliance with the religious order has little to do with religious conviction and more to do with fear of punishment and social stigma. Montesquieu also shows how Christianity can be said to battle against human nature and especially her sexual passion. Montesquieu calls the divine origin of the bible into question, and instead suggests it was written by human hand. Subsequently, by means of rational thinking, a humanist perspective and a utilitarian principle, he questions a world order founded on a dogmatic interpretation of the bible. Fear as a central part of the religious life, the subjects complete subordination to the religious structures, the suppression of the human passions and simulating modes of actions are all central parts in what Montesquieu calls despotic structures. In Persian Letters he exposes parallels between religious despotism, political despotism and despotic family life. Montesquieu further links women’s situation directly with the political life. Within the family, Montesquieu tells us, citizens first developed a relationship to power, and power structures. These experiences later come to influence the individual’s behaviour in society, and constitute the foundation for the political life.

In this thesis I attempt to show that there is no apparent good reason why one ought to embrace the sceptic’s claim that international relations lies beyond the pale of moral inquiry. The state, in the sceptic’s view, grounds its foreign policy in the national interest and not in morality. To assert otherwise is to mistake the fundamental essence of international relations--a claim resting on the assumption that “morality” and “interest” are either antithetical or epistemologically distinct objects of study. On reflection, however, one must have--at the very least--some kind of conceptual understanding about the idea “the national interest” before such a claim can be sustained. Although much has been said by many authors about the kinds of substantive policies which, in their respective views, actually serve the national interest-- e.g., policies which contribute to the maintenance or enhancement of national power--the idea of “the national interest” itself has attracted very little conceptual scrutiny. In this study, then, I attempt to shift the focus away from a concentration on the standards for determining whether this or that policy actually serves the national interest to a concentration on the idea of the national interest itself. Before this logically prior task is completed--an immense task for which my contribution can be interpreted as only a small one--there is no reason to embrace the notion that “morality” and “interest” are either antithetical or categorically distinct. This is particularly true if, through such an analysis, “the national interest” proves to be a categorically moral idea--viz., if it proves to be a proper object of study for students of moral and political philosophy.

This thesis is a detailed investigation of the phonology and phonetics of the intonation of Persian carried out in the framework of the AM theory of intonational phonology. Based on 2112 utterances read by a total of 8 native speakers, the work, on the one hand, presents a phonological account of the prosodic structure of this language, a structure that consists of the level Accentual Phrase with the pitch accent (L+)H* immediately dominated by the level Intonational Phrase, each level being marked by a low or high boundary tone. On the other hand, it scrutinizes the phonetic implementation of tones with regard to segments and shows how the phonology of Persian intonation is phonetically realized in the speech string. This research also studies the intonational patterns of simplex sentences, compound sentences coordinated with different types of conjunctions, subordinate structures, and vocative constructions. The sentence types include copular verb declaratives, sentences with unaccusative and unergative verbs, (S)(O)V sentences with and without adjuncts, null subject sentences, scrambled sentences, yes/no questions, leading yes/no questions, alternative questions, tag questions, single and multiple WH-questions, echo questions, imperatives, and single, double, and phrase focus constructions.

This thesis is a detailed investigation of the phonology and phonetics of the intonation of Persian carried out in the framework of the AM theory of intonational phonology. Based on 2112 utterances read by a total of 8 native speakers, the work, on the one hand, presents a phonological account of the prosodic structure of this language, a structure that consists of the level Accentual Phrase with the pitch accent (L+)H* immediately dominated by the level Intonational Phrase, each level being marked by a low or high boundary tone. On the other hand, it scrutinizes the phonetic implementation of tones with regard to segments and shows how the phonology of Persian intonation is phonetically realized in the speech string. This research also studies the intonational patterns of simplex sentences, compound sentences coordinated with different types of conjunctions, subordinate structures, and vocative constructions. The sentence types include copular verb declaratives, sentences with unaccusative and unergative verbs, (S)(O)V sentences with and without adjuncts, null subject sentences, scrambled sentences, yes/no questions, leading yes/no questions, alternative questions, tag questions, single and multiple WH-questions, echo questions, imperatives, and single, double, and phrase focus constructions.

The main goal of this thesis is to investigate the nature of an optional consonant deletion process, through an articulatory and acoustic study of word-final consonant clusters in Persian. Persian word-final coronal stops are optionally deleted when they are preceded by obstruents or the homorganic nasal /n/. For example, the final clusters in the words /næft/ “oil”, /suχt/ “burnt” and /qæsd/ “intention” are optionally simplified in fast/casual speech, resulting in: [næf], [suχ], and [qæs]. What is not clear from this traditional description is whether the coronal stop is truly deleted, or if a coronal gesture is produced, but not heard, because it is obscured by the adjacent consonants. According to Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990a, 1990b, 1992, 2001), the articulatory gestures of the deleted segments can still exist even if the segments are not heard. In this dissertation, ultrasound imaging was used to determine whether coronal consonant deletion in Persian is categorical or gradient, and the acoustic consequences of cluster simplification were investigated through duration and spectral measures. This phonetic study enables an account for the optional nature of the cluster simplification process. A general phonological account is provided for the simplification of coda clusters with rising sonority, and the acoustic and articulatory investigation focuses on the simplification of clusters with coronal stops. Ten Persian-speaking graduate students from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, five male and five female, aged 25-38 participated in the articulatory and acoustic study. Audio and real time ultrasound video recordings were made while subjects had a guided conversation with a native speaker of Persian. 662 tokens of word-final coronal clusters were auditorily classified into unsimplified and simplified according to whether they contained an audible [t]. Singleton coda consonants and singleton /t/s were also captured as controls. The end of the constriction plateau of C1 and beginning of constriction plateau of C3 were used to define a time interval in which to measure the coronal gesture as the vertical distance between the tongue blade and the palate. Smoothing Splines ANOVA was used in a novel way to compare tongue blade height over time across the three conditions. The articulatory results of this study showed that the gestures of the deleted segments are often still present. More specifically, the findings showed that of the clusters that sounded simplified, some truly had no [t] gesture, some had gestural overlap, and some had reduced gestures. In order to explain the optional nature of the simplification process, it is argued that the simplified tokens are the result of two independent mechanisms. Inevitable mechanical and physiological effects generate gesturally reduced and overlapped tokens whereas planned language-specific behaviors driven by phonological rules or abstract cognitive representations result in no [t]-gesture output. The findings of this study support the main arguments presented in Articulatory Phonology regarding the underlying reasons for sound patterns and sound change. The results of this study are further used to examine different sound change models. It is argued that the simplified tokens with totally deleted [t] gesture could be the result of speakers changing their representations based on other people’s gestural overlap. This would be instances of the Choice and Chance categories in Blevins’ (2004) CCC sound change model. The acoustic results did not find any major cues which could distinguish simplified tokens from controls. It is argued that articulatory data should form an integral part of phonetic studies.

Amendments pasted on front end paper. / Bibliography: leaves 333-355. / viii, 355 leaves : ill., maps ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Studies the changes in the language of commercial press advertising found before 1979 (the year of the Islamic Revolution in Iran) and after 1990. Investigating their varying effects on sociolinguistic norms, and to relate the changes to external factors in the ideology and social history of Iran. Also addresses the wider issue of the relation between language and ideology in different kinds of societies, in particular islamic societies. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of European Studies, 1998?