Abstract

For a millennium, Persian was a preeminent language of learning far beyond Iran, stretching from the Balkans to China. In this talk on his recent book, Alexander Jabbari explores what became of the vast Persian literary heritage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Iran and South Asia, as nationalism took hold and the Persianate world fractured into nation-states. He shows how Iranians and South Asians drew from their shared past to produce a ‘Persianate modernity.’ Drawing from both Persian and Urdu sources, he reveals how intellectual and literary exchange between South Asian Muslims and Iranians resulted in the modernization of literary history, sexuality, national identity, and print culture.

Bio

Alexander Jabbari is an assistant professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of The Making of Persianate Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2023), as well as scholarly articles published in Iranian Studies; Journal of Persianate Studies; PMLA; Philological Encounters; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East; and elsewhere.