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Project

Women’s Intellectual Labor: The Interface of Gender, Literature and Politics in Modern Iran

The primary concern of this study is to provide a panorama of the current state of women in novel publishing field in Iran as a writer, a translator or an independent publisher and to explore the impact of ideological-political shifts on the quantity as well as quality of their works during 1991 to 2010. What makes this time frame specific is that during this period three different political discourses dominated the political system in Iran: 1) Reconstruction movement 1991-1996, 2) Reformists movement 1996-2005, 3) Conservatives movement 2005-2010), and their impacts were conspicuous in systemic fluctuations of the fields of literary translation as well as original novel publishing. To this aim, this study adopts a mixed-methodology approach in two distinct (but related) phases: quantitative phase and qualitative phase. Phase 1 involves collecting the related data about the novels and novellas written, translated or published by women, and then Social Network Analysis (SNA) will be carried out to find patterns of relationships. While phase 1 is exploratory in nature, phase 2 will be explanatory. The purpose of this phase is twofold: to understand how political-ideological discourse affected the women’s decision making in what they write, translate  or publish in literary scene of Iran and to explore empowering policies that can contribute to minimize the influence of possible political (or may be sociocultural) restrictions for women to have stronger contribution in literary publishing field.  This phase involves two qualitative analysis. Firstly, the qualitative analysis of novels written, translated and published by Iranian women during the specified timeframe in terms of thematic focus will be carried out. Secondly, semi-structured interviews with publishers, writers and translators will be carried out to explore the views, experiences, beliefs and/or motivations on the interaction between politics and women’s position in literary/publishing field in Iran.
 

Date:1 Nov 2019 →  31 Oct 2023
Keywords:Politics, Iran literary field, Social Network Analysis, Women writers, Women translators, Women publishers, thematic analysis, patterns of relationships, empowering strategies
Disciplines:Literary studies not elsewhere classified, Translation and interpretation sciences, Cultural sociology, Sociological methodology and research methods, Gender studies