A fresh look at Iranian popular culture and women's role within this prior to the 1979 Revolution.

The Women's Awakening Project in late 1930s Iran under Reza Shah Pahlavi is the focus of this historical look at the emergence of the modern concept of womanhood in Iran. Amin's extensive research confirms that Reza Shah's controversial attempt to forcibly westernize Iranian women, and not the pre-revolutionary 1970's, marked the turning point for "the woman question" in Iran. Drawing on a combination of archival data, oral history, diplomatic sources, and contemporary press reports, Amin's is the first book to explore the Women's Awakening Project in such detail. By illustrating Reza Shah's efforts both to emancipate and to control Iranian women, the book raises new questions about the relationship between the Iranian state and its female citizens. Amin breaks new ground in the study of Iranian history by examining the links between state policy, popular culture, and individual memory. This highly readable book also provides crucial background for understanding the current debate between "hardliners" and "reformers" in Iran.

"Combining the best of archival research, oral history, and textual analysis, . . . Amin's text offers new avenues of inquiry into the relationship between modern states and the lives of their female citizens."--Lisa Pollard, University of North Carolina, Wilmington "An imaginative and well-documented study of the development of modern Iranian womanhood [that] demonstrates the developing nature of the patriarchal obstacles in the way of women's emancipation as much as it reveals the dynamism and complexity of the Women's Awakening. "--Fatemeh Keshavarz, Washington University The Women's Awakening Project in late 1930s Iran under Reza Shah Pahlavi is the focus of this historical look at the emergence of the modern concept of womanhood in Iran. Amin's extensive research confirms that Reza Shah's controversial attempt to forcibly westernize Iranian women, and not the pre-revolutionary 1970's, marked the turning point for "the woman question" in Iran. Drawing on a combination of archival data, oral history, diplomatic sources, and contemporary press reports, Amin's is the first book to explore the Women's Awakening Project in such detail. By illustrating Reza Shah's efforts both to emancipate and to control Iranian women, the book raises new questions about the relationship between the Iranian state and its female citizens. Amin breaks new ground in the study of Iranian history by examining the links between state policy, popular culture, and individual memory. This highly readable book also provides crucial background for understanding the current debate between "hardliners" and "reformers" in Iran. Camron Michael Amin, assistant professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, is the director of the Modern Middle East Source Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A study of citizenship formation in post-1979 Iran, examining the centrality of non-elite women's participation in the process.

Iranian women tell in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. The Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed all areas of Iranian life. For women, the consequences were extensive and profound, as the state set out to reverse legal and social rights women had won and to dictate many aspects of women's lives, including what they could study and how they must dress and relate to men. Reconstructed Lives presents Iranian women telling in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. Through a series of interviews with professional and working women in Iran—doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, secretaries, businesswomen—Haleh Esfandiari gathers dramatic accounts of what has happened to their lives as women in an Islamic society. She and her informants describe the strategies by which women try to and sometimes succeed in subverting the state's agenda. Esfandiari also provides historical background on the women's movement in Iran. She finds evidence in Iran's experience that even women from "traditional" and working classes do not easily surrender rights or access they have gained to education, career opportunities, and a public role.

In a challenging and authoritative analysis of the role of Iranian women in the political process, Parvin Paidar considers the ways they have been affected by the evolutionary and revolutionary transformations of twentieth-century Iran. In so doing, she demonstrates how political reorganisation has of necessity redefined the position of women, and that, contrary to the view of conventional scholarship, gender issues are fundamental to the political process in contemporary Iran. The implications of the study bear on the broader issues of women in the Middle East and the developing countries generally.

Acclaimed poet Nilofar Shidmehr’s debut story collection is an unflinching look at the lives of women in post-revolutionary Iran and the contemporary diaspora in Canada. The stories begin in 1978, the year before the Iranian Revolution. In a neighbourhood in Tehran, a group of affluent girls play a Cinderella game with unexpected consequences. In the mid 1980s, women help their husbands and brothers survive war and political upheaval. In the early 1990s in Vancouver, Canada, a single-mother refugee is harassed by the men she meets on a telephone dating platform. And in 2003, a Canadian woman working for an international aid organization is dispatched to her hometown of Bam to assist in the wake of a devastating earthquake. At once powerful and profound, Divided Loyalties depicts the rich lives of Iranian women and girls in post-revolutionary Iran and the contemporary diaspora in Canada; the enduring complexity of the expectations forced upon them; and the resilience of a community experiencing the turmoil of war, revolution, and migration.