Iran Namag: A Bilingual Quarterly of Iranian Studies Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2026 Editor-in-Chief: Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi English Verso Lalehzar Under Allied Occupation: A Localized Narrative of a Global Conflict Ida Meftahi The Life and Times of Mirza Reza Khan Afshar Mahasti Afshar Quest for an International Shipwreck: Taqī Rafʿat and the Titanic Arash Poorakbar […]
The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 is frequently portrayed as a footnote in the history of World War II, with Iran primarily viewed as a strategic supply route used for transporting ammunition and military equipment to the Soviet Union. However, such telescopic accounts often overlook the crimes committed by Allied troops and the war’s […]
Mirza Reza Khan Afshar (1887-1964) was a Majles deputy from Urmia and Tabriz, minister of roads and transportation, and governor of Gilan, Kerman and Esfahan between 1923-1955. In 1944, while banned from public service, he pioneered Iranian Airways, the first commercial airline in Iran, which he served as chairman and CEO until the company was nationalized […]
The shipwreck of the Titanic happened far from the Iranian lands, as did modernity and modernization. Nevertheless, it had an impact on the Iranian atmosphere even more than the disasters happening in Iran. The impact of modernization is evident and commonplace, requiring no extensive argumentation to prove. The capitalist states imposed upon the so-called backward […]
Besides the sheer magnificence and monumentalism of the unfolding 45-volume Encyclopaedia Iranica (EI), probably largest published single encompassment of a particular culture zone in the world, my occasional attempts to formulate Agendas for Persian Studies look too personal and ad hoc. But I take heart that my ponderings have not been so hapless as to draw […]
This essay examines the intimate relations between literary translation and literary criticism through the practice of close reading. Reading translation alongside New Criticism, Russian Formalism, deconstruction, and Gayatri Spivak’s characterization of translation as “the most intimate act of reading,” the essay argues that the interpretive labor of criticism is also indispensable to translation. Close reading, […]
