Books in the The Global Middle East series

An account of the rise of political Islam in modern Iran, following the intellectual journey of the philosopher Ahmad Fardid. This book will be of use to scholars in courses studying modern Iran, political Islam and the politics of the Middle East, philosophy, post-colonial studies, religious studies and social theory.

Bridging debates across political economy, critical geography, and Middle East studies, this original perspective on the Gulf monarchies and their pivotal role in the Middle East will provide essential insights to anyone interested in understanding the contemporary region.

Innovative, provocative, and timely; tackles head-on the main assumptions of the foundation of Israel as a Jewish state, with far-reaching implications on politics, society and culture beyond the state of Israel. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, it is an important and topical contribution to the field of Middle East studies.

Challenging the prevailing view of pre-Revolution Iran, this new perspective on Iranian politics and culture in the 1960s and 70s documents how the Pahlavi State adopted 'Westoxification' discourses to present ideological alternatives to modern and Western-inspired cultural attitudes in Iran.

Psycho-nationalism focuses on the history of the use of Iranian identity under the Shah, as well as by the governments since the 1979 Iranian revolution, to offer an exploration into the psychological and political roots of national identity and how these are often utilised by governments.

In the lead-up to the revolution, Iran's cinematic culture reveals much about its society and politics. With her unique take, Golbarg Rekabtalaei opens new avenues for the understanding of cosmopolitanism in Iran and the ways in which it became a style of national imagination through the lens of cinema.

Ahmad Fardid (1910-94), an 'anti-Western' philosopher, became the self-proclaimed philosophical spokesperson for the Islamic Republic, coining the term 'Westoxication'. With thirteen interviews relating his colourful life and intellectual legacy, Mirsepassi sheds light on Iran's twentieth-century intellectual and political self-construction.

Turkey's and Egypt's foreign policies in the 1950s present a puzzle, with the Turkish Democratic Party pursuing NATO membership and sponsoring the pro-Western Baghdad Pact, while Egypt's Free Officers promoted neutralism and pan-Arab alliances. Abou-El-Fadl argues that the answer to this lies in the two leaderships' contrasting nation making projects.

Starting with the end of the Iran-Iraq War in August 1988 and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, Sadeghi-Boroujerdi looks at the rise and evolution of reformist thought in Iran and how it came to rethink the nature of political and religious authority under the Islamic Republic.

This examination of the Iranian popular culture and women's role within this challenges familiar western assumptions about the complexities of Iranian popular culture. Presenting a wealth of information drawn from a diverse set of sources, it situates Iranian women's magazines within their broader economic, social, political and cultural context.

Moving beyond the Eurocentric approach to travel narratives, this comprehensive and transformative account of the adventures of more than a dozen Persian travelers in the nineteenth century re-discovers and reclaims the world as seen through their rich travelogues, removing the colonial borders within which their narratives had been placed.

From popular and 'New Wave' pre-revolutionary films of Fereydoon Goleh and Abbas Kiarostami to post-revolutionary films of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the Iranian cinema has produced a range of films and directors that have garnered international fame and earned a global following. Golbarg Rekabtalaei takes a unique look at Iranian cosmopolitanism and how it transformed in the Iranian imagination through the cinematic lens. By examining the development of Iranian cinema from the early twentieth century to the revolution, Rekabtalaei locates discussions of modernity in Iranian cinema as rooted within local experiences, rather than being primarily concerned with Western ideals or industrialisation. Her research further illustrates how the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity of Iran's citizenry shaped a heterogeneous culture and a cosmopolitan cinema that was part and parcel of Iran's experience of modernity. In turn, this cosmopolitanism fed into an assertion of sovereignty and national identity in a modernising Iran in the decades leading up to the revolution.