Description: The Iranian revolution of 1979 not only had an impact on regional and international affairs, but was made possible by the world and time in which it unfolded. This multi-disciplinary volume presents this revolution within its transnational and global contexts. Moving deftly from the personal to the global and from the provincial to the national, it draws attention to the multiplicity of spaces of the revolution such as streets, schools, prisons, personal lives, and histories such as the Cold War and Global 1960s and 70s. With a broad range of approaches, Global 1979 conceives of the Iranian Revolution not as exceptional or anachronistic, but as an uprising constituted by multiple, interwoven geographies and histories, which disrupt static and bounded notions of the local, national, regional, and global.
Brief description: Arang Keshavarzian is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He is the author of Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace (2009). His articles have been published in journals including Politics and Society, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Geopolitics, Economy and Society, and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. He is currently a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report and MERIP.
Review Quotes: 'Highly original, theoretically sophisticated and meticulously researched, the contributions collected here represent a major breakthrough in scholarly efforts to understand the enigma of the 1979 revolution in Iran.' Stephanie Cronin, University of Oxford