My current research (with Olmo Gölz of Freiburg University) analyzes new trends in visual iconography and propaganda in Iran, the challenges of promoting regime ideology in the social media age, and the engagement of the Iranian people with government messaging. It is an effort to understand how government actors—and their affiliates in the media and design world—leverage new digital technologies to promote core ideological claims and political positions of the Islamic Republic. This has resulted in multiple academic and public-facing articles, including “Visual Propaganda at a Crossroads: New Techniques at Iran's Vali Asr Billboard” (Visual Studies) and “Negotiating Gender During Times of Crisis in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies). A book manuscript, tentatively titled Visualizing the Islamic Republic: Narration, Ideology, and Myth-Making in Iran, is in preparation. In addition to this project, I am also researching the cultural and literary production of the “Shrine Defense” and the history of Iran’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War more broadly.

 

This contemporary turn follows an initial research project focused on the diverse geographies and societies of the early modern and modern Persianate world in Iran, Central Asia, and South Asia, with an emphasis on highlighting the many inter-connections, and later divergences, between these regions through the prism of Persian literary production, circulation of texts, political culture, social life, and intellectual interchange. This resulted in my first book Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700-1900 (Edinburgh University Press), which integrates forgotten tales of literary communities across Iran, Afghanistan and South Asia – at a time when Islamic empires were fracturing and new state formations were emerging. It challenges the manner in which Iranian nationalism has infiltrated Persian literary history writing and recovers the multi-regional breadth and vibrancy of a global lingua franca connecting peoples and places across Islamic Eurasia. I continue to remain active in the field of Persianate Studies. Recent contributions include co-editing a special issue of Iranian Studies entitled “Persianate Pasts; National Presents: Persian Literary and Cultural Production in the Twentieth Century” and a co-authored essay “Pathways to Persotopias” in PMLA, both of which address the methodological value and challenges of a Persianate framework across space and time.