RECOVERING ‘LOST VOICES’:
THE ROLE AND DEPICTION OF IRANIAN/PERSIANATE SUBALTERNS FROM THE 13TH CENTURY TO THE MODERN PERIOD
A multi-year research programme funded by the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS)
Programme Director:
Professor Andrew J Newman
The University of Edinburgh
The aim of this project is to involve scholars from a wide range of disciplines in the commencement of an organised effort to utilise an extensive range of sources to recover evidence of the ‘voices’ of ‘subalterns’ across the pre-modern and modern terrains of both rural and urban society across the Persianate world.
The wide-ranging sources to be explored for direct and indirect access to these voices could include elite Persian diplomatic and political-economic (court-level) materials but also those drawn from such a broad range of ‘cultural’ spheres as, for example, art and architecture (including cinema, for the modern period), prose, poetry and other media and religious materials (Sunni, Shi`i and Sufi) of all genres in all relevant languages. The project seeks also to explore attitudes toward the subaltern by the authors of these sources. Finally, the project aims also to identify problems in accessing/using the sources and questions/avenues for further research across Persianate history and, in the process, to establish an on-going network to chart pathways for further associated research projects and support for these.
Organisation
There will be four one-day workshops over the lifetime of the project organised to address subalterns across the following historical periods: pre-Safavid Iran, the Safavid period, the Zand/Qajar periods and the Pahlavi/IRI periods.
Selected papers from the project will be published.
Read more at:
http://bips.ac.uk/recovering-lost-voices/