Fall 2008

MES 324K • IRANIAN CULTURE

Course Description

Designed for Iranian-American students in any field and non-heritage American students with an interest in Middle Eastern or Iranian Studies or Persian, this Iranian Culture course deals exclusively with Iranian texts of various sorts, among them: postage stamps, paintings, Persian carpets, video recordings of culture-specific ceremonies, a documentary film on life in Iran today, a recent feature film, a short story, a traditional poem, a modernist poem, an essay on Iranian history, typical Iranian jokes, several religious texts, and recipes for typical Iranian meals. The course, whick develops ideas and theses first presented in 'Iranian Culture: A Persianist View' (1992, revised edition) and more recently developed in a series of Persian language modules on various culture topics, concludes with a discussion of issues in Iranian culture and a comparative analysis of comparable features in Iranian and American cultures.

Grading Policy

Class participation 20% A book report on an assigned book on Iranian culture from the course bibliography 20% Two review tests 60%. The course has no final exam.

Texts

Course materials appear in an Iranian Cuture Course Syllabus, available for purchase by students at Paradigm Books before the second class session. Besides texts on cited subjects, ICCS also contains two glossaries of terms (on culture and the ta'arof system of polite and deferential speech), a series of chronologies (history, religion, language, literature, and cinema), and a course bibliography.

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