This study investigates the causes of the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. To this end, the different theories of revolution are reviewed in Chapter One. Chapter Two provides a discussion of the historical background of the country and the role the clergy played in shaping its political development. Socioeconomic and political factors which contributed to the outbreak of this revolution are examined in the following two chapters. Finally, an attempt is made to draw some conclusions on whether existing theories of revolution can fully explain the Iranian upheaval of 1978-79 or not. For the preparation of this study United States government documents and Iranian and English language scholarly works were consulted.

This dissertation seeks to capture immigrant experiences reflected by Iranian authors living in the USA. The main objective of this literary-historical work is to explore the literary devices used by chosen authors to capture immigrants' memories in selected works of prose. The central theme is the issue of identity, particularly the authors' attitude towards Iran and the USA, and the reflection of individual and collective immigrant identity in the works. Another aim is to show whether the tendency to preserve the Iranian, American or Iranian-American identity prevails. Other tasks also include an identification of bilingual specifics in selected works and consideration of its impact on comprehensiveness of the text. To achieve the purpose of this dissertation, mostly autobiographical or semi-autobiographical literary works were selected, analyzed and interpreted. Relations in the Iranian Diaspora and interaction of Iranian characters with Americans were also scrutinized. Literary and linguistic analysis of selected works from Taqi Modarressi indicates that a mother tongue used by bilingual author can be an important device to confirm and reinforce the collective and individual identity in the Diaspora. Analysis of autobiographical, semi-autobiographical and some works of fiction revealed, that...

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The constitutional revolution of 1905 is seen to result from the impact of Western political values on Iran's traditional society. Reza Shah's dictatorship is explained in the context of compromise between feudalism and growing capitalism. The roles and interactions of nationalism, religion, communism and political parties in Iran, particularly during 1945-1953, shows they were the reflection of profound changes within society. The Shah's policies were politically motivated; they caused social dislocation and the politicization of the peasantry. The regime's failure to respond to these forces brought about its isolation. We confirm Huntington's concept of political development and decay. Iran's changes of discontinuity and violence are seen clearly. This study recommends the strengthening of the political channels of communication for Iran.

There have been many studies on media (mis)representations of the Middle East and Iran. However, the experts and analysts who serve as major sources for those representations (and for government policy making) have not been systematically studied. This project studies discourses and networks of widely published Iran experts during the first year of the presidency of Iran’s Hassan Rouhani (2013-2014), the period during which unprecedented direct U.S.-Iran diplomacy paved the way for the historic nuclear agreement with Iran. Norman Fairclough’s three dimensional critical discourse analysis method and Peter Haas’s Epistemic Community approach are employed to study discursive as well as non-discursive (networked) characteristics of the most widely published U.S. Iran experts during this time period. Results identify five major epistemic communities that, altogether, represent the spectrum of U.S. Iran experts: neoconservatism, liberal interventionism, containment (tactical engagement), strategic engagement, and rapprochement. These five epistemic communities are described in detail throughout the five results chapters. Findings show that these experts influence the terms of media representations as well as the foreign policy making process. Findings also show that experts operate in a web of discursive as well as networked affiliations (i.e., epistemic communities) in order to be able to develop and circulate their discourses. It is however important to recognize that epistemic communities are not uniform in terms of formation stage, cohesion and level.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the participation of females in the labor force of Iran between 1956 and 1966. Selected demographic variables are age, educational attainment, employment rates, and marital status. The data are from the national censuses of 1956 and 1966. The traditional female roles are discussed. The findings of the study indicate that female participation rates increased in the educational, economical and political fields. There are indications that sex roles are being modified as related to urbanization and industrialization.

Most western Iranian languages, despite their broad differences, show a common quality when it comes to the verbal agreement of past transitive verbs. Dabir-moghaddam (2013) and Haig (2008) discuss it as a grammaticalized split-agreement to encode S, A, and P, which is sensitive to tense and transitivity, and uses split-ergative constructions for its past transitive verbs. Laki shows vestiges of the same kind of verb-agreement ergativity (Comrie 1978) by using a mixture of affixes and clitics for subject and object marking. In this thesis, I investigate how the different classes of verbs show agreement using four distinct property classes. Considering the special case of the {3 sg} and using Hopper and Traugott's pattern for the cline of grammaticality (2003), I argue that although Laki has already lost the main part of its ergative constructions, the case of the {3 sg} marking is yet another sign that this language is in the process of absolute de-ergativization and its hybrid alignment system is moving toward morphosyntactic unity. As a formal representation of the Laki data, the final part of the thesis provides a morphosyntactic HPSG analysis of the agreement patterns in Laki, using the grammar of cliticized verb-forms (Miller and Sag 1997).

This dissertation provides a syntactic representation of Motion Predicates (MPs) expressed by series of verbs known as Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) in Southern Tati –an Indo-European language spoken mainly in the Northwestern parts of Iran. This study addresses the sub-eventive decomposition of MPs by following the theoretical framework established by generative-constructivists like Borer (2005) and Ramchand (2008), as implemented for MPs in Benedicto and Salomon (2014).This dissertation also contributes to the documentation of Southern Tati, which iscategorized by UNESCO as ‘definitely’endangered.<br>

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This study is concerned with the relationship between the Iranian Oil Industry and Iranian economy. Oil revenues have been the largest source for financing economic development plans and for obtaining foreign exchange. In this paper, the history of the Iranian oil industry is summarized, and five previously implemented developmental plans are analyzed. Additionally, the impact of oil on some economic sectors and its contribution to GNP is examined. The strong correlation between oil reserves and the economy may bring a problem in the future when oil reserves run out. Iranian economists believe that the economy must be industrialized in order to reduce the economy's reliance on oil. This paper recommends that all the economic sectors, particularly agriculture, should receive careful consideration, even though the national goal is to industrialize the economy.