این مقاله به بررسی گذشته، حال، و آینده رشته ادبیات تطبیقی در ایران می پردازد. در آن قواعد تئوریک ... more این مقاله به بررسی گذشته، حال، و آینده رشته ادبیات تطبیقی در ایران می پردازد. در آن قواعد تئوریک ادبیات تطبیقی معاصر با برداشت پیشامدرن فارسی ـ اسلامی از " تطبیق" به مقایسه گذاشته می شود، که در قالب مکتب های عربی، اسلامی، و ایرانی ادبیات تطبیقی در ایران و جهان عربی تئوریزه شده اند. مقاله مذکور مرکزگرایی فارسی ـ شیعی متعارف و عمیقا نهادینه شده در دانشگاه های ایران را برجسته می کند، و نشان می دهد که چگونه رشته ادبیات تطبیقی همچون وسیله ای در خدمت این فراملی گرایی فارسی ـ شیعی قرار گرفته است و بر بستر دانشگاه های اروپا و آمریکای شمالی در " جهان فارسی" برجسته شده است. نوواژه " جهان فارسی"(persianate world) که مارشال هودسون در دهه 1960 ابداع کرد در ارتباط با چرخش های زبانی و فرهنگی دهه 1970، تحقیقات پسا استعماری که متعاقب "شرق شناسی" ادوارد سعید در اواخر دهه 1990 رشد کردند، و فرمول بندی شلدون پولوک از "جهان میهن سانسکریت" در قرن بیست و یکم، مورد بررسی قرار گرفته است. این مقاله نشان می دهد که چگونه تطبیق گرایان فارسی، زیر پرچم مطالعات پسا استعماری، نه تنها تجربیات زیردستان و مستعمره های داخلی غیر فارس را به نفع حکومت های خاورمیانه و در قالب یک ماتریکس دوگانه (امپریالیسم غربی در مقابل یک جهان مستعمره اسلامی) زدودند، بلکه تصویری غیرواقعبینانه و بزرگ نماشده از این رشته را هم به خواننده غربی ارائه می دهند. این مقاله همچنین بستر مطالعات پسا استعماری خاورمیانه را در خصوص "استعمار داخلی" ترسیم می کند تا همچون ابزاری تحلیلی در خدمت اندیشیدن به کارکردها و سیستم های بهم پیوسته قدرت در خاورمیانه و آنسوتر قرار گیرد، که برای نخستین بار در اینجا و در ارتباط با ادبیات تطبیقی بکار گرفته شده است.
Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism and Translation, 2023
FARZAD KAMANGAR, a Kurdish school teacher, poet, and activist, was imprisoned and tortured by the... more FARZAD KAMANGAR, a Kurdish school teacher, poet, and activist, was imprisoned and tortured by the Islamic Republic of Iran for four years. In prison, even after being sentenced to death, Kamangar continued to advocate for human rights and justice for Iran’s minority communities in letters that he smuggled out of prison, sometimes in fragments, addressed to his young students and other political prisoners. The Islamic regime executed Kamangar at age thirty-five in 2010.
This article examines the reception of Kafka in modern Persian literature. Ṣādiq Hidāyat’s Kafka’... more This article examines the reception of Kafka in modern Persian literature. Ṣādiq Hidāyat’s Kafka’s Message (Payām-i Kāfkā 1948) is the catalyst of this reception as one of the first critical Persian texts to discuss a European writer and the first sustained, critical text on Kafka in any Islamic cultural context. Hidāyat’s efforts in repackaging Kafka as a Manichean, downplaying Kafka’s Jewish ethnicity and religion, are placed in dialogue with past, present, and future critical readings of Kafka in academic circles. By shedding light on Hidāyat’s introduction to Khayyām’s Melodies (Tarānahā-yi Khayyām 1934) and Kafka’s Message, this article moves beyond previous scholarship, which focuses exclusively on Hidāyat as a surrealist novelist and short story writer, to draw attention to his contributions to Persian literary criticism. It shows how Hidāyat perceived and articulated a critical humanism in a tradition which he traces from ‘Umar Khayyām, through Kafka, to his own literary enterprise. An appendix offers an original English translation of the opening pages of Kafka’s Message.
This article studies the geographic divergence of comparative literature in Turkey in the Ottoman... more This article studies the geographic divergence of comparative literature in Turkey in the Ottoman Era (1299-1923) and Modern Turkey (1923-present) in connection with Eastern and European languages and literary cultures. The reflections of Edward Said, Emily Apter, and other scholars concerning Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer and the "invention" of the discipline of comparative literature in Istanbul, are placed in dialogue with "comparative consciousness" of Ottoman scholars, particularly during the Tanzimat (1839-1876), the First Constitutional (1876-1878) era, and the decades prior to the foundation of modern Turkey. The article proposes a hybrid identity for comparative literature in Turkey to tackle the current crisis of comparative literature in Turkey, arising from the divergences of spatial peripheries and periods.
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Open AccessArticle
Kurds, Jews, and Kurdistani Jews: His... more first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints Open AccessArticle Kurds, Jews, and Kurdistani Jews: Historic Homelands, Perceptions of Parallels in Persecution, and Allies by Analogy by Haidar Khezri Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA Religions 2022, 13(3), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13030253 Received: 4 November 2021 / Revised: 3 March 2022 / Accepted: 11 March 2022 / Published: 17 March 2022 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Are Muslim-Jewish Relations Improving in the 21st Century?) Download Versions Notes Abstract This article highlights the positive relations between the Jewish and the Kurdish nations, maintained mainly by Kurdistani Jews until their displacement to Israel in the mid-20th century. These positive relations have been transmitted through their oral traditions, documented by both communities and travelers to Kurdistan, and validated by several scholars who studied the Jews of the region, Kurdistan, and Jewish-Kurdish relations. The dearth of historical documentation of both societies has resulted in a ‘negative myth’ used by the enemies of the Kurds and the Jews to dehumanize them before the 20th century, and therefore delegitimizing their right to statehood in modern times. From the 16th century onward, there is more solid evidence about the Kurdistani Jews and their relations with Kurdish neighbors. There are considerable and certain parallels between the two nations in terms of their oral traditions as well as linguistic and literary practices. The historical ties between the Jews and their neighbors in Kurdistan formed a fruitful ground for the relations between the Jewish people of Israel and the Kurds since 1948. Despite the exodus of almost the entire Kurdistani Jewish population to the State of Israel, Kurdistani Jews have largely retained their identity, culture, and traditions and have effectively influenced Israel’s policy towards the Kurds. The often-secret relations between the Kurdish movement in Iraq and Israel since 1960 played an important role in the global security policy of the Jewish nation in the Middle East, and in effect served to keep Baghdad from becoming involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict on one hand, and allowed the Kurdish liberation movement in Southern/Iraqi Kurdistan to survive on the other. These ties were reinforced by the sense of a common fate and struggle for statehood, persecution and genocides, feeling of solidarity, mutual strategic interests, humanitarian and economic dimensions, in post-1988 Halabja Massacre, the operation of the US led coalition against Iraq in 1991, and 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Since the Arab Spring, the military interventions against the self-proclaimed caliphate, Islamic State (IS), and the referendum for an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq in 2017, this relationship allegedly has extended to include the relationships between Israel and the Kurds in Western/Syrian and Eastern/Iranian Kurdistan as well. Notably, Israel was the only state that publicly supported the creation of an independent Kurdish state. With all the development the Kurdish question has paved in the 21st century, the article concludes that the majority of the Kurds of the 21st century can be described as a ‘pariah people’ in Max Weber’s definition and meditation of the term and Hannah Arendt’s ‘rightless’, who ‘no longer belong to any community’, while describing the different aspects of the political, economic, and cultural calamity of Jews, refugees, and stateless people at the beginning of the 20th century.
This essay studies the history, current, and future status of the discipline of comparative liter... more This essay studies the history, current, and future status of the discipline of comparative literature in Iran. It compares the theoretical norms of contemporary comparative literature to the Premodern Perso-Islamic notion of "comparison," which has been theorized in Iran and the Arab World as the Arabic, Islamic, and Iranian schools of comparative literature. The article highlights profound institutional and canonical Perso-Shi'a centrism in Iranian academia, and shows how the discipline of comparative literature has been used as a vehicle for transnationalism of this Perso-Shi'a centrism that has manifested in "Persianate World" in the context of European and North American academia. Marshall Hodgson's 1960s neologism "Persianate World" has been placed with the paradigm shifts ushered in by the linguistic and cultural turns of the 1970s, the postcolonial scholarship that grew from Edward Said's Orientalism in the late 1990s, and Sheldon Pollock's formulation of a 'Sanskrit cosmopolis' in the 21st century. The article explains how the Persianate comparatists, under the banner of postcolonial studies, not only erased the experience of the subaltern and internally colonialized non-Persians of Iran in favor of the Middle Eastern states in a binary matrix (Western Imperialism versus a "colonialized" Islamic world), but also represents an unrealistic and exaggerated picture of the discipline to Western readers. The article further maps the conversations within the postcolonial Middle East about "internal colonialism," as an analytic tool for thinking about operations and interlocking systems of power in the Middle East and abroad, here applied to the discipline of comparative literature for the first time.
Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages, 2021
Abstract:
This article discusses the status of Kurdish as a stateless language in the U.S. By usi... more Abstract: This article discusses the status of Kurdish as a stateless language in the U.S. By using intersectionality as the theoretical framework, the article argues that the educational structures of power converge, at Kurds home countries and abroad, to create a set of conditions under which the stateless Kurdish language exists, always in a kind of invisible but persistent multiple jeopardy. The article shows how Kurdish in the U.S., similar to the Middle East, has been merely tolerated, and finds itself excluded from opportunities reserved for languages that enjoy privileges pertaining to statehood, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which have been fostered within academic departments of Middle Eastern and Near Eastern studies, Iranian, Arabic, and Turkish studies. The article examines how available the frameworks of institutions such as the American Council for Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the National Council for Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL), which were initially founded to represent foreign, critical, and less commonly taught language in the U.S., are insufficient for offsetting a stateless language’s intersection and multiple axes of marginalization, statelessness, suppression, discrimination, and soft and hard linguicide. This intersectional status of Kurdish sheds light on examining the wider implications of stateless languages and demands a total recasting and rethinking of existing policy frameworks within federal and higher education institutions regarding stateless languages. Finally, the article further maps the conversations within the social sciences about intersectionality as an analytic tool for thinking about operations and interlocking systems of power, here applied to a language for the first time.
The love story of Majnun Layla, a legend that originated in the Middle East, has been translated ... more The love story of Majnun Layla, a legend that originated in the Middle East, has been translated and retold so often that it has become part of our global literary imagination. The story has been often received, compared, and studied in connection to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This is despite the fact that there are fundamental differences between the two masterpieces, not to mention that the reception of Majnun Layla has exceeded literary reception, extending to other media. The first part of the article presents new social, political, religious, and literary interpretations of Majnun Layla. The second part of the article discusses the legend's migration from seventh-century Arabic culture to its operatic adaption in Azerbaijan in 1908 (the first opera to be staged in an Islamic context), its first cinematic adaptation in Malay language in 1933 in Bangladesh, its first scholarly treatment in comparative literature in Iran in 1938-1940, and finally its most recent cinematic representation in the 2011 American movie Habibi. The article notes the most important achievements and elements that have been added to the story during the legend's cross-cultural and multidisciplinary journeys. The article concludes by proposing that the multiple-horizontal-circle model of comparative literature and post-colonial studies is more adequate for understanding texts like Majnun Layla than the conventional binary-vertical-linear model for research in Arabic and Middle Eastern comparative literature and world literature.
The first part of this article studies the modern history of the advent and development of compar... more The first part of this article studies the modern history of the advent and development of comparative literature in the Arab world. It delineates how the Arabic school -the only theoretical innovation of the Arab world's comparative literature circles - can make sense of recent developments in Arab countries, such as the Arab spring or "Islamic awareness." The second part of the article deals with the concurrent movement of Arabic comparative literature away from its Western margin closer towards the center of West Asian comparative literature; especially Persian, Turkish, and Kurdish.
Abstract:
The first part of this article studies the theory of “existence as a father’s crime ag... more Abstract:
The first part of this article studies the theory of “existence as a father’s crime against his son”, in the life and literary legacy of a prominent philosopher among Arab poets, ʼAbu al-'Alā al-Ma'arrī (973 – 1058) and in the works of the contemporary Persian poet and archeologist, Fereīdoon-i Tavallalī (1919- 1985). The second part of the article through textual and extra-textual evidence examines how Fereīdoon-i Tavallalī was directly influenced by al-Macarrī’s literary legacy in his own theory about “existence as a father’s crime against his son”.
Key words: Abū al-'Alā’ al-Ma'arrī, Fereīdoon Tavallalī, The Fathers Crime against his Son, Comparative Literature
این مقاله به بررسی گذشته، حال، و آینده رشته ادبیات تطبیقی در ایران می پردازد. در آن قواعد تئوریک ... more این مقاله به بررسی گذشته، حال، و آینده رشته ادبیات تطبیقی در ایران می پردازد. در آن قواعد تئوریک ادبیات تطبیقی معاصر با برداشت پیشامدرن فارسی ـ اسلامی از " تطبیق" به مقایسه گذاشته می شود، که در قالب مکتب های عربی، اسلامی، و ایرانی ادبیات تطبیقی در ایران و جهان عربی تئوریزه شده اند. مقاله مذکور مرکزگرایی فارسی ـ شیعی متعارف و عمیقا نهادینه شده در دانشگاه های ایران را برجسته می کند، و نشان می دهد که چگونه رشته ادبیات تطبیقی همچون وسیله ای در خدمت این فراملی گرایی فارسی ـ شیعی قرار گرفته است و بر بستر دانشگاه های اروپا و آمریکای شمالی در " جهان فارسی" برجسته شده است. نوواژه " جهان فارسی"(persianate world) که مارشال هودسون در دهه 1960 ابداع کرد در ارتباط با چرخش های زبانی و فرهنگی دهه 1970، تحقیقات پسا استعماری که متعاقب "شرق شناسی" ادوارد سعید در اواخر دهه 1990 رشد کردند، و فرمول بندی شلدون پولوک از "جهان میهن سانسکریت" در قرن بیست و یکم، مورد بررسی قرار گرفته است. این مقاله نشان می دهد که چگونه تطبیق گرایان فارسی، زیر پرچم مطالعات پسا استعماری، نه تنها تجربیات زیردستان و مستعمره های داخلی غیر فارس را به نفع حکومت های خاورمیانه و در قالب یک ماتریکس دوگانه (امپریالیسم غربی در مقابل یک جهان مستعمره اسلامی) زدودند، بلکه تصویری غیرواقعبینانه و بزرگ نماشده از این رشته را هم به خواننده غربی ارائه می دهند. این مقاله همچنین بستر مطالعات پسا استعماری خاورمیانه را در خصوص "استعمار داخلی" ترسیم می کند تا همچون ابزاری تحلیلی در خدمت اندیشیدن به کارکردها و سیستم های بهم پیوسته قدرت در خاورمیانه و آنسوتر قرار گیرد، که برای نخستین بار در اینجا و در ارتباط با ادبیات تطبیقی بکار گرفته شده است.
Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism and Translation, 2023
FARZAD KAMANGAR, a Kurdish school teacher, poet, and activist, was imprisoned and tortured by the... more FARZAD KAMANGAR, a Kurdish school teacher, poet, and activist, was imprisoned and tortured by the Islamic Republic of Iran for four years. In prison, even after being sentenced to death, Kamangar continued to advocate for human rights and justice for Iran’s minority communities in letters that he smuggled out of prison, sometimes in fragments, addressed to his young students and other political prisoners. The Islamic regime executed Kamangar at age thirty-five in 2010.
This article examines the reception of Kafka in modern Persian literature. Ṣādiq Hidāyat’s Kafka’... more This article examines the reception of Kafka in modern Persian literature. Ṣādiq Hidāyat’s Kafka’s Message (Payām-i Kāfkā 1948) is the catalyst of this reception as one of the first critical Persian texts to discuss a European writer and the first sustained, critical text on Kafka in any Islamic cultural context. Hidāyat’s efforts in repackaging Kafka as a Manichean, downplaying Kafka’s Jewish ethnicity and religion, are placed in dialogue with past, present, and future critical readings of Kafka in academic circles. By shedding light on Hidāyat’s introduction to Khayyām’s Melodies (Tarānahā-yi Khayyām 1934) and Kafka’s Message, this article moves beyond previous scholarship, which focuses exclusively on Hidāyat as a surrealist novelist and short story writer, to draw attention to his contributions to Persian literary criticism. It shows how Hidāyat perceived and articulated a critical humanism in a tradition which he traces from ‘Umar Khayyām, through Kafka, to his own literary enterprise. An appendix offers an original English translation of the opening pages of Kafka’s Message.
This article studies the geographic divergence of comparative literature in Turkey in the Ottoman... more This article studies the geographic divergence of comparative literature in Turkey in the Ottoman Era (1299-1923) and Modern Turkey (1923-present) in connection with Eastern and European languages and literary cultures. The reflections of Edward Said, Emily Apter, and other scholars concerning Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer and the "invention" of the discipline of comparative literature in Istanbul, are placed in dialogue with "comparative consciousness" of Ottoman scholars, particularly during the Tanzimat (1839-1876), the First Constitutional (1876-1878) era, and the decades prior to the foundation of modern Turkey. The article proposes a hybrid identity for comparative literature in Turkey to tackle the current crisis of comparative literature in Turkey, arising from the divergences of spatial peripheries and periods.
first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints
Open AccessArticle
Kurds, Jews, and Kurdistani Jews: His... more first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints Open AccessArticle Kurds, Jews, and Kurdistani Jews: Historic Homelands, Perceptions of Parallels in Persecution, and Allies by Analogy by Haidar Khezri Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA Religions 2022, 13(3), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13030253 Received: 4 November 2021 / Revised: 3 March 2022 / Accepted: 11 March 2022 / Published: 17 March 2022 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Are Muslim-Jewish Relations Improving in the 21st Century?) Download Versions Notes Abstract This article highlights the positive relations between the Jewish and the Kurdish nations, maintained mainly by Kurdistani Jews until their displacement to Israel in the mid-20th century. These positive relations have been transmitted through their oral traditions, documented by both communities and travelers to Kurdistan, and validated by several scholars who studied the Jews of the region, Kurdistan, and Jewish-Kurdish relations. The dearth of historical documentation of both societies has resulted in a ‘negative myth’ used by the enemies of the Kurds and the Jews to dehumanize them before the 20th century, and therefore delegitimizing their right to statehood in modern times. From the 16th century onward, there is more solid evidence about the Kurdistani Jews and their relations with Kurdish neighbors. There are considerable and certain parallels between the two nations in terms of their oral traditions as well as linguistic and literary practices. The historical ties between the Jews and their neighbors in Kurdistan formed a fruitful ground for the relations between the Jewish people of Israel and the Kurds since 1948. Despite the exodus of almost the entire Kurdistani Jewish population to the State of Israel, Kurdistani Jews have largely retained their identity, culture, and traditions and have effectively influenced Israel’s policy towards the Kurds. The often-secret relations between the Kurdish movement in Iraq and Israel since 1960 played an important role in the global security policy of the Jewish nation in the Middle East, and in effect served to keep Baghdad from becoming involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict on one hand, and allowed the Kurdish liberation movement in Southern/Iraqi Kurdistan to survive on the other. These ties were reinforced by the sense of a common fate and struggle for statehood, persecution and genocides, feeling of solidarity, mutual strategic interests, humanitarian and economic dimensions, in post-1988 Halabja Massacre, the operation of the US led coalition against Iraq in 1991, and 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Since the Arab Spring, the military interventions against the self-proclaimed caliphate, Islamic State (IS), and the referendum for an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq in 2017, this relationship allegedly has extended to include the relationships between Israel and the Kurds in Western/Syrian and Eastern/Iranian Kurdistan as well. Notably, Israel was the only state that publicly supported the creation of an independent Kurdish state. With all the development the Kurdish question has paved in the 21st century, the article concludes that the majority of the Kurds of the 21st century can be described as a ‘pariah people’ in Max Weber’s definition and meditation of the term and Hannah Arendt’s ‘rightless’, who ‘no longer belong to any community’, while describing the different aspects of the political, economic, and cultural calamity of Jews, refugees, and stateless people at the beginning of the 20th century.
This essay studies the history, current, and future status of the discipline of comparative liter... more This essay studies the history, current, and future status of the discipline of comparative literature in Iran. It compares the theoretical norms of contemporary comparative literature to the Premodern Perso-Islamic notion of "comparison," which has been theorized in Iran and the Arab World as the Arabic, Islamic, and Iranian schools of comparative literature. The article highlights profound institutional and canonical Perso-Shi'a centrism in Iranian academia, and shows how the discipline of comparative literature has been used as a vehicle for transnationalism of this Perso-Shi'a centrism that has manifested in "Persianate World" in the context of European and North American academia. Marshall Hodgson's 1960s neologism "Persianate World" has been placed with the paradigm shifts ushered in by the linguistic and cultural turns of the 1970s, the postcolonial scholarship that grew from Edward Said's Orientalism in the late 1990s, and Sheldon Pollock's formulation of a 'Sanskrit cosmopolis' in the 21st century. The article explains how the Persianate comparatists, under the banner of postcolonial studies, not only erased the experience of the subaltern and internally colonialized non-Persians of Iran in favor of the Middle Eastern states in a binary matrix (Western Imperialism versus a "colonialized" Islamic world), but also represents an unrealistic and exaggerated picture of the discipline to Western readers. The article further maps the conversations within the postcolonial Middle East about "internal colonialism," as an analytic tool for thinking about operations and interlocking systems of power in the Middle East and abroad, here applied to the discipline of comparative literature for the first time.
Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages, 2021
Abstract:
This article discusses the status of Kurdish as a stateless language in the U.S. By usi... more Abstract: This article discusses the status of Kurdish as a stateless language in the U.S. By using intersectionality as the theoretical framework, the article argues that the educational structures of power converge, at Kurds home countries and abroad, to create a set of conditions under which the stateless Kurdish language exists, always in a kind of invisible but persistent multiple jeopardy. The article shows how Kurdish in the U.S., similar to the Middle East, has been merely tolerated, and finds itself excluded from opportunities reserved for languages that enjoy privileges pertaining to statehood, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which have been fostered within academic departments of Middle Eastern and Near Eastern studies, Iranian, Arabic, and Turkish studies. The article examines how available the frameworks of institutions such as the American Council for Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the National Council for Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL), which were initially founded to represent foreign, critical, and less commonly taught language in the U.S., are insufficient for offsetting a stateless language’s intersection and multiple axes of marginalization, statelessness, suppression, discrimination, and soft and hard linguicide. This intersectional status of Kurdish sheds light on examining the wider implications of stateless languages and demands a total recasting and rethinking of existing policy frameworks within federal and higher education institutions regarding stateless languages. Finally, the article further maps the conversations within the social sciences about intersectionality as an analytic tool for thinking about operations and interlocking systems of power, here applied to a language for the first time.
The love story of Majnun Layla, a legend that originated in the Middle East, has been translated ... more The love story of Majnun Layla, a legend that originated in the Middle East, has been translated and retold so often that it has become part of our global literary imagination. The story has been often received, compared, and studied in connection to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This is despite the fact that there are fundamental differences between the two masterpieces, not to mention that the reception of Majnun Layla has exceeded literary reception, extending to other media. The first part of the article presents new social, political, religious, and literary interpretations of Majnun Layla. The second part of the article discusses the legend's migration from seventh-century Arabic culture to its operatic adaption in Azerbaijan in 1908 (the first opera to be staged in an Islamic context), its first cinematic adaptation in Malay language in 1933 in Bangladesh, its first scholarly treatment in comparative literature in Iran in 1938-1940, and finally its most recent cinematic representation in the 2011 American movie Habibi. The article notes the most important achievements and elements that have been added to the story during the legend's cross-cultural and multidisciplinary journeys. The article concludes by proposing that the multiple-horizontal-circle model of comparative literature and post-colonial studies is more adequate for understanding texts like Majnun Layla than the conventional binary-vertical-linear model for research in Arabic and Middle Eastern comparative literature and world literature.
The first part of this article studies the modern history of the advent and development of compar... more The first part of this article studies the modern history of the advent and development of comparative literature in the Arab world. It delineates how the Arabic school -the only theoretical innovation of the Arab world's comparative literature circles - can make sense of recent developments in Arab countries, such as the Arab spring or "Islamic awareness." The second part of the article deals with the concurrent movement of Arabic comparative literature away from its Western margin closer towards the center of West Asian comparative literature; especially Persian, Turkish, and Kurdish.
Abstract:
The first part of this article studies the theory of “existence as a father’s crime ag... more Abstract:
The first part of this article studies the theory of “existence as a father’s crime against his son”, in the life and literary legacy of a prominent philosopher among Arab poets, ʼAbu al-'Alā al-Ma'arrī (973 – 1058) and in the works of the contemporary Persian poet and archeologist, Fereīdoon-i Tavallalī (1919- 1985). The second part of the article through textual and extra-textual evidence examines how Fereīdoon-i Tavallalī was directly influenced by al-Macarrī’s literary legacy in his own theory about “existence as a father’s crime against his son”.
Key words: Abū al-'Alā’ al-Ma'arrī, Fereīdoon Tavallalī, The Fathers Crime against his Son, Comparative Literature
Course description and objectives: Classical Persian Literature in English Translation aims to ac... more Course description and objectives: Classical Persian Literature in English Translation aims to acquaint undergraduate students with classical Persian literature (poetry and prose) and its canonical figures, works, forms, themes and genres from the beginning until the end of 19th century. We will read and discuss the major linguistic and literary work of this period in conjunction within larger social, political, cultural, historical and intellectual contexts. Although classical Persian literature is rightly considered the " jewel in the crown " of the Iranian cultural heritage, its content, temporal and local range, and influence extend far beyond its discipline, the era, and borders of Iran. With a temporal scope of over a thousand years and a local scope from Istanbul to Delhi, classical Persian literature is best approached as a lead actor on the stage of world literature. Even the Romantic poets of England and Germany were profoundly influenced by Khayyam and Hafez, and Rumi remains an icon of mystical thought in the United States to this day. The course takes the form of lectures, presentations, seminar discussions, and movie screenings. Materials and assignments are in English, but interested non-native Persian speakers are welcome to contact me by e-mail if they would like to do the assignments or readings (or part of them) in Persian.
Course description and objectives: Modern and Contemporary Persian Literature in English Translat... more Course description and objectives: Modern and Contemporary Persian Literature in English Translation aims to acquaint students with Persian literature (poetry and prose) and its canonical figures, works, forms, themes and genres from the beginning of the 20th century until the present. We read and discuss the major linguistic and literary works of this period in conjunction within larger social, political, cultural, historical and intellectual contexts in order to have a better understanding of modern Iran and our world today. In addition, the course includes discussion of the major influences and effects of Western and world literature on Persian poets and writers during this period on one hand, and the contribution of modern and contemporary Persian literature to world literature today on the other. The course also engages with Persian literature beyond Iran as well as Persian literature in exile –written in Persian and non-Persian (but available in English) – especially after the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran and the Green Movement of 2009. The course takes the form of lectures, presentations, seminar discussions and movie screenings. Materials and assignments are in English, but interested non-native Persian speakers are welcome to contact me by e-mail if they would like to complete the assignments or readings (or parts of them) in Persian.
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Open AccessArticle
Kurds, Jews, and Kurdistani Jews: Historic Homelands, Perceptions of Parallels in Persecution, and Allies by Analogy
by Haidar Khezri
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA
Religions 2022, 13(3), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13030253
Received: 4 November 2021 / Revised: 3 March 2022 / Accepted: 11 March 2022 / Published: 17 March 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Are Muslim-Jewish Relations Improving in the 21st Century?)
Download Versions Notes
Abstract
This article highlights the positive relations between the Jewish and the Kurdish nations, maintained mainly by Kurdistani Jews until their displacement to Israel in the mid-20th century. These positive relations have been transmitted through their oral traditions, documented by both communities and travelers to Kurdistan, and validated by several scholars who studied the Jews of the region, Kurdistan, and Jewish-Kurdish relations. The dearth of historical documentation of both societies has resulted in a ‘negative myth’ used by the enemies of the Kurds and the Jews to dehumanize them before the 20th century, and therefore delegitimizing their right to statehood in modern times. From the 16th century onward, there is more solid evidence about the Kurdistani Jews and their relations with Kurdish neighbors. There are considerable and certain parallels between the two nations in terms of their oral traditions as well as linguistic and literary practices. The historical ties between the Jews and their neighbors in Kurdistan formed a fruitful ground for the relations between the Jewish people of Israel and the Kurds since 1948. Despite the exodus of almost the entire Kurdistani Jewish population to the State of Israel, Kurdistani Jews have largely retained their identity, culture, and traditions and have effectively influenced Israel’s policy towards the Kurds. The often-secret relations between the Kurdish movement in Iraq and Israel since 1960 played an important role in the global security policy of the Jewish nation in the Middle East, and in effect served to keep Baghdad from becoming involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict on one hand, and allowed the Kurdish liberation movement in Southern/Iraqi Kurdistan to survive on the other. These ties were reinforced by the sense of a common fate and struggle for statehood, persecution and genocides, feeling of solidarity, mutual strategic interests, humanitarian and economic dimensions, in post-1988 Halabja Massacre, the operation of the US led coalition against Iraq in 1991, and 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Since the Arab Spring, the military interventions against the self-proclaimed caliphate, Islamic State (IS), and the referendum for an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq in 2017, this relationship allegedly has extended to include the relationships between Israel and the Kurds in Western/Syrian and Eastern/Iranian Kurdistan as well. Notably, Israel was the only state that publicly supported the creation of an independent Kurdish state. With all the development the Kurdish question has paved in the 21st century, the article concludes that the majority of the Kurds of the 21st century can be described as a ‘pariah people’ in Max Weber’s definition and meditation of the term and Hannah Arendt’s ‘rightless’, who ‘no longer belong to any community’, while describing the different aspects of the political, economic, and cultural calamity of Jews, refugees, and stateless people at the beginning of the 20th century.
ئەم وتارە لە مێژوو، پێگەی هەنووکەیی و داهاتووی بواری ئەدەبی بەراوردکاری لە ئێران دەکۆڵێتەوە. ئەم وتارە بنەما تیۆرییەکانی ئەدەبیاتی بەراوردکاریی هاوچەرخ لەگەڵ چەمکی “هەڵسەنگاندن” لە قۆناخەکانی پێش مۆدێرن لە کولتووری فارسی-ئیسلامیدا بەراورد دەکات کە لە قوتابخانەی عەرەبی، ئیسلامی و ئێرانی ئەدەبیاتی بەراوردکاری لە ئێران و جیهانی عەرەبیدا پێناسە کراوە. ئەم وتارە هەروەها تەرکیزی قووڵی دامەزراوەیی لە زانکۆکانی ئێران وەک ناوەندگەرایی کولتووری شیعە-فارسی نیشان دەدات و دەری دەخات کە بواری ئەدەبیاتی بەراوردکاری وەک ئامرازێک بۆ بە ترانسنەشناڵیزەکردنی ئەم ناوەندگەرایی‌یە شیعە-فارسییە لە چوارچێوەی زانکۆکانی ئەورووپا و ئەمریکای باکووردا سەری هەڵداوە وەک “جیهانی فارسی زمان” دەرکەوتووە. لە ڕوانگەی پۆلێنکردنی شلێدۆن پالووکەوە، “جیهانی فارسی زمان” چەمکی مارشال هاجسنە کە لە ساڵانی شەستەکانەوە لەگەڵ گۆڕانکارییە پارادایمەکانی پەیوەست بە وەرچەرخانە زمانەوانی و کولتوورییەکانی حەفتاکان و لێکۆڵینەوەیەی پوست کۆلۆنیالیزم کە لە لێکۆڵینەوەکانی ڕۆژهەڵاتناسیی ئێدوارد سەعیدەوە لە کۆتایی‌یەکانی نەوەدەکاندا سەرچاوە گرتووە و داڕشتنی “کۆسمۆپۆلیسی سانسکریتی” لەلایەن شێڵدۆن پالۆکەوە لە سەدەی بیست و یەکەمدا پێک هاتووە. ئەم وتارە هەروەها ڕوونی دەکاتەوە کە چۆن بەراوردکارانی زمانی فارسی، لە ژێر ناوی لێکۆڵینەوەکانی پۆست کۆلۆنیالیزمدا، نەک هەر ئەزموونی نەتەوە ژێردەستەکان و غەیرە فارس زمانەکان لە ئێراندا لە بەرژەوەندیی حکومەتەکانی ڕۆژهەڵاتی ناوەڕاست لە ماتریکسی دووانەیی (ئیمپریالیزمی ڕۆژئاوا بەرانبەر بە “ کۆڵۆنیالیزمی” جیهانی ئیسلامی) سڕیوەتەوە، بەڵکوو وێنەیەکی ناڕاستەقینە و زیادەڕەویی‌یان لە بوارەکە پێشکەش بە خوێنەرانی ڕۆژئاوا کردووە. ئەم بابەتە زیاتر گفتوگۆ ناوخۆیی‌یەکان سەبارەت بە “کۆڵۆنیالیزمی ناوخۆیی” لە ڕۆژهەڵاتی ناوەڕاست وەک ئامرازێکی شیکاری بۆ بیرکردنەوە لە ئۆپەراسیۆن و سیستەمی بەهێزکردن لە ڕۆژهەڵاتی ناوەڕاست و دەرەوەی ئەو وڵاتانە دەناسێنێت، کە لێرەدا بۆ یەکەم جــار بۆ بواری ئەدەبیاتی بەراوردکاری بەکار هێنراوە.
This article discusses the status of Kurdish as a stateless language in the U.S. By using intersectionality as the theoretical framework, the article argues that the educational structures of power converge, at Kurds home countries and abroad, to create a set of conditions under which the stateless Kurdish language exists, always in a kind of invisible but persistent multiple jeopardy. The article shows how Kurdish in the U.S., similar to the Middle East, has been merely tolerated, and finds itself excluded from opportunities reserved for languages that enjoy privileges pertaining to statehood, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which have been fostered within academic departments of Middle Eastern and Near Eastern studies, Iranian, Arabic, and Turkish studies. The article examines how available the frameworks of institutions such as the American Council for Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the National Council for Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL), which were initially founded to represent foreign, critical, and less commonly taught language in the U.S., are insufficient for offsetting a stateless language’s intersection and multiple axes of marginalization, statelessness, suppression, discrimination, and soft and hard linguicide. This intersectional status of Kurdish sheds light on examining the wider implications of stateless languages and demands a total recasting and rethinking of existing policy frameworks within federal and higher education institutions regarding stateless languages. Finally, the article further maps the conversations within the social sciences about intersectionality as an analytic tool for thinking about operations and interlocking systems of power, here applied to a language for the first time.
The first part of this article studies the theory of “existence as a father’s crime against his son”, in the life and literary legacy of a prominent philosopher among Arab poets, ʼAbu al-'Alā al-Ma'arrī (973 – 1058) and in the works of the contemporary Persian poet and archeologist, Fereīdoon-i Tavallalī (1919- 1985). The second part of the article through textual and extra-textual evidence examines how Fereīdoon-i Tavallalī was directly influenced by al-Macarrī’s literary legacy in his own theory about “existence as a father’s crime against his son”.
Key words: Abū al-'Alā’ al-Ma'arrī, Fereīdoon Tavallalī, The Fathers Crime against his Son, Comparative Literature
Open AccessArticle
Kurds, Jews, and Kurdistani Jews: Historic Homelands, Perceptions of Parallels in Persecution, and Allies by Analogy
by Haidar Khezri
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA
Religions 2022, 13(3), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13030253
Received: 4 November 2021 / Revised: 3 March 2022 / Accepted: 11 March 2022 / Published: 17 March 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Are Muslim-Jewish Relations Improving in the 21st Century?)
Download Versions Notes
Abstract
This article highlights the positive relations between the Jewish and the Kurdish nations, maintained mainly by Kurdistani Jews until their displacement to Israel in the mid-20th century. These positive relations have been transmitted through their oral traditions, documented by both communities and travelers to Kurdistan, and validated by several scholars who studied the Jews of the region, Kurdistan, and Jewish-Kurdish relations. The dearth of historical documentation of both societies has resulted in a ‘negative myth’ used by the enemies of the Kurds and the Jews to dehumanize them before the 20th century, and therefore delegitimizing their right to statehood in modern times. From the 16th century onward, there is more solid evidence about the Kurdistani Jews and their relations with Kurdish neighbors. There are considerable and certain parallels between the two nations in terms of their oral traditions as well as linguistic and literary practices. The historical ties between the Jews and their neighbors in Kurdistan formed a fruitful ground for the relations between the Jewish people of Israel and the Kurds since 1948. Despite the exodus of almost the entire Kurdistani Jewish population to the State of Israel, Kurdistani Jews have largely retained their identity, culture, and traditions and have effectively influenced Israel’s policy towards the Kurds. The often-secret relations between the Kurdish movement in Iraq and Israel since 1960 played an important role in the global security policy of the Jewish nation in the Middle East, and in effect served to keep Baghdad from becoming involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict on one hand, and allowed the Kurdish liberation movement in Southern/Iraqi Kurdistan to survive on the other. These ties were reinforced by the sense of a common fate and struggle for statehood, persecution and genocides, feeling of solidarity, mutual strategic interests, humanitarian and economic dimensions, in post-1988 Halabja Massacre, the operation of the US led coalition against Iraq in 1991, and 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Since the Arab Spring, the military interventions against the self-proclaimed caliphate, Islamic State (IS), and the referendum for an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq in 2017, this relationship allegedly has extended to include the relationships between Israel and the Kurds in Western/Syrian and Eastern/Iranian Kurdistan as well. Notably, Israel was the only state that publicly supported the creation of an independent Kurdish state. With all the development the Kurdish question has paved in the 21st century, the article concludes that the majority of the Kurds of the 21st century can be described as a ‘pariah people’ in Max Weber’s definition and meditation of the term and Hannah Arendt’s ‘rightless’, who ‘no longer belong to any community’, while describing the different aspects of the political, economic, and cultural calamity of Jews, refugees, and stateless people at the beginning of the 20th century.
ئەم وتارە لە مێژوو، پێگەی هەنووکەیی و داهاتووی بواری ئەدەبی بەراوردکاری لە ئێران دەکۆڵێتەوە. ئەم وتارە بنەما تیۆرییەکانی ئەدەبیاتی بەراوردکاریی هاوچەرخ لەگەڵ چەمکی “هەڵسەنگاندن” لە قۆناخەکانی پێش مۆدێرن لە کولتووری فارسی-ئیسلامیدا بەراورد دەکات کە لە قوتابخانەی عەرەبی، ئیسلامی و ئێرانی ئەدەبیاتی بەراوردکاری لە ئێران و جیهانی عەرەبیدا پێناسە کراوە. ئەم وتارە هەروەها تەرکیزی قووڵی دامەزراوەیی لە زانکۆکانی ئێران وەک ناوەندگەرایی کولتووری شیعە-فارسی نیشان دەدات و دەری دەخات کە بواری ئەدەبیاتی بەراوردکاری وەک ئامرازێک بۆ بە ترانسنەشناڵیزەکردنی ئەم ناوەندگەرایی‌یە شیعە-فارسییە لە چوارچێوەی زانکۆکانی ئەورووپا و ئەمریکای باکووردا سەری هەڵداوە وەک “جیهانی فارسی زمان” دەرکەوتووە. لە ڕوانگەی پۆلێنکردنی شلێدۆن پالووکەوە، “جیهانی فارسی زمان” چەمکی مارشال هاجسنە کە لە ساڵانی شەستەکانەوە لەگەڵ گۆڕانکارییە پارادایمەکانی پەیوەست بە وەرچەرخانە زمانەوانی و کولتوورییەکانی حەفتاکان و لێکۆڵینەوەیەی پوست کۆلۆنیالیزم کە لە لێکۆڵینەوەکانی ڕۆژهەڵاتناسیی ئێدوارد سەعیدەوە لە کۆتایی‌یەکانی نەوەدەکاندا سەرچاوە گرتووە و داڕشتنی “کۆسمۆپۆلیسی سانسکریتی” لەلایەن شێڵدۆن پالۆکەوە لە سەدەی بیست و یەکەمدا پێک هاتووە. ئەم وتارە هەروەها ڕوونی دەکاتەوە کە چۆن بەراوردکارانی زمانی فارسی، لە ژێر ناوی لێکۆڵینەوەکانی پۆست کۆلۆنیالیزمدا، نەک هەر ئەزموونی نەتەوە ژێردەستەکان و غەیرە فارس زمانەکان لە ئێراندا لە بەرژەوەندیی حکومەتەکانی ڕۆژهەڵاتی ناوەڕاست لە ماتریکسی دووانەیی (ئیمپریالیزمی ڕۆژئاوا بەرانبەر بە “ کۆڵۆنیالیزمی” جیهانی ئیسلامی) سڕیوەتەوە، بەڵکوو وێنەیەکی ناڕاستەقینە و زیادەڕەویی‌یان لە بوارەکە پێشکەش بە خوێنەرانی ڕۆژئاوا کردووە. ئەم بابەتە زیاتر گفتوگۆ ناوخۆیی‌یەکان سەبارەت بە “کۆڵۆنیالیزمی ناوخۆیی” لە ڕۆژهەڵاتی ناوەڕاست وەک ئامرازێکی شیکاری بۆ بیرکردنەوە لە ئۆپەراسیۆن و سیستەمی بەهێزکردن لە ڕۆژهەڵاتی ناوەڕاست و دەرەوەی ئەو وڵاتانە دەناسێنێت، کە لێرەدا بۆ یەکەم جــار بۆ بواری ئەدەبیاتی بەراوردکاری بەکار هێنراوە.
This article discusses the status of Kurdish as a stateless language in the U.S. By using intersectionality as the theoretical framework, the article argues that the educational structures of power converge, at Kurds home countries and abroad, to create a set of conditions under which the stateless Kurdish language exists, always in a kind of invisible but persistent multiple jeopardy. The article shows how Kurdish in the U.S., similar to the Middle East, has been merely tolerated, and finds itself excluded from opportunities reserved for languages that enjoy privileges pertaining to statehood, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which have been fostered within academic departments of Middle Eastern and Near Eastern studies, Iranian, Arabic, and Turkish studies. The article examines how available the frameworks of institutions such as the American Council for Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the National Council for Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL), which were initially founded to represent foreign, critical, and less commonly taught language in the U.S., are insufficient for offsetting a stateless language’s intersection and multiple axes of marginalization, statelessness, suppression, discrimination, and soft and hard linguicide. This intersectional status of Kurdish sheds light on examining the wider implications of stateless languages and demands a total recasting and rethinking of existing policy frameworks within federal and higher education institutions regarding stateless languages. Finally, the article further maps the conversations within the social sciences about intersectionality as an analytic tool for thinking about operations and interlocking systems of power, here applied to a language for the first time.
The first part of this article studies the theory of “existence as a father’s crime against his son”, in the life and literary legacy of a prominent philosopher among Arab poets, ʼAbu al-'Alā al-Ma'arrī (973 – 1058) and in the works of the contemporary Persian poet and archeologist, Fereīdoon-i Tavallalī (1919- 1985). The second part of the article through textual and extra-textual evidence examines how Fereīdoon-i Tavallalī was directly influenced by al-Macarrī’s literary legacy in his own theory about “existence as a father’s crime against his son”.
Key words: Abū al-'Alā’ al-Ma'arrī, Fereīdoon Tavallalī, The Fathers Crime against his Son, Comparative Literature