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A cross-disciplinary volume on the intersections of—and tensions between—culture and government in Iran's late Pahlavi period. 

In recent years, scholarly interest in Iran's late Pahlavi period (1941–1979) has grown significantly and historians are increasingly approaching the era not merely as a prelude to the Iranian Revolution, but as a period worthy of study in its own right. New generations of scholars have uncovered fresh sources and offered original perspectives on the cultural and social life of this era. Yet opportunities for cross-disciplinary engagement among scholars from different fields who are exploring similar questions remain limited. This volume, the product of two international workshops at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and the University of Marburg, respectively, is a collection of the work of scholars at various stages of their careers from various disciplines investigating the cultural history of late Pahlavi Iran from a multiplicity of perspectives, including: archaeology, architecture, scholarship, media, art, film, literature, politics, religion, museums, music, philosophy, education, and theater.

Chapters explore the interactions between state ideology and the sociocultural sphere, exploring ideas such as: the influence of the press and literature on social discourses; the culturally strategic and identity-forming role of the performing arts; the relationship between state education policy and culture; the employment of foreign artists, architects, scholars, and musicians in the context of Iran’s cultural diplomacy; and the dynamics of (state) religion, spirituality, nationalism, and psychology in modern media or through their dissemination in the media. The volume explores not only the Pahlavi state’s direct participation in facilitating cultural activity or scholarly endeavors, but also how artists, writers, historians, and other cultural actors flourished independent of (sometimes in spite of) the state apparatus.

The volume does not seek to provide an encyclopaedic collection detailing every aspect of culture in the Pahlavi period, but the case studies explored demonstrate the breadth and complexities of this field in the historiography. Moreover, by shedding light on the various features of culture in the late Pahlavi era and encouraging multidisciplinary discussions, the volume aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the vibrant cultural life in Iran during this period.

From prehistory to the present, the Indigenous peoples of the Andes have used a visual symbol system—that is, art—to express their sense of the sacred and its immanence in the natural world. Many visual motifs that originated prior to the Incas still appear in Andean art today, despite the onslaught of cultural disruption that native Andeans have endured over several centuries. Indeed, art has always been a unifying power through which Andeans maintain their spirituality, pride, and culture while resisting the oppression of the dominant society.

In this book, Mary Strong takes a significantly new approach to Andean art that links prehistoric to contemporary forms through an ethnographic understanding of Indigenous Andean culture. In the first part of the book, she provides a broad historical survey of Andean art that explores how Andean religious concepts have been expressed in art and how artists have responded to cultural encounters and impositions, ranging from invasion and conquest to international labor migration and the internet. In the second part, Strong looks at eight contemporary art types—the scissors dance (danza de tijeras), home altars (retablos), carved gourds (mates), ceramics (ceramica), painted boards (tablas), weavings (textiles), tinware (hojalateria), and Huamanga stone carvings (piedra de Huamanga). She includes prehistoric and historic information about each art form, its religious meaning, the natural environment and sociopolitical processes that help to shape its expression, and how it is constructed or performed by today’s artists, many of whom are quoted in the book.

Artaud and His Doublesis a radical re-thinking of one of the most influential theater figures of the twentieth century. Placing Artaud's writing within the specific context of European political, theatrical, and intellectual history, the book reveals Artaud's affinities with a disturbing array of anti-intellectual and reactionary writers and artists whose ranks swelled catastrophically between the wars in Western Europe.

Kimberly Jannarone shows that Artaud's work reveals two sets of doubles: one, a body of peculiarly persistent received interpretations from the American experimental theater and French post-structuralist readings of the 1960s; and, two, a darker set of doubles—those of Artaud's contemporaries who, in the tumultuous, alienated, and pessimistic atmosphere enveloping much of Europe after World War I, denounced the degradation of civilization, yearned for cosmic purification, and called for an ecstatic loss of the self. Artaud and His Doubleswill generate provocative new discussions about Artaud and fundamentally challenge the way we look at his work and ideas.

Tracing the evolution of the Italian avant-garde’s pioneering experiments with art and technology and their subversion of freedom and control

In postwar Italy, a group of visionary artists used emergent computer technologies as both tools of artistic production and a means to reconceptualize the dynamic interrelation between individual freedom and collectivity. Working contrary to assumptions that the rigid, structural nature of programming limits subjectivity, this book traces the multifaceted practices of these groundbreaking artists and their conviction that technology could provide the conditions for a liberated social life.

Situating their developments within the context of the Cold War and the ensuing crisis among the Italian left, Arte Programmata describes how Italy’s distinctive political climate fueled the group’s engagement with computers, cybernetics, and information theory. Creating a broad range of immersive environments, kinetic sculptures, domestic home goods, and other multimedia art and design works, artists such as Bruno Munari, Enzo Mari, and others looked to the conceptual frameworks provided by this new technology to envision a way out of the ideological impasses of the age.

Showcasing the ingenuity of Italy’s earliest computer-based art, this study highlights its distinguishing characteristics while also exploring concurrent developments across the globe. Centered on the relationships between art, technology, and politics, Arte Programmata considers an important antecedent to the digital age. 

Sanchez argues that the seemingly hopeless cycle of violence experienced by Mexico in the 20th century, as reflected in its "crime genre," reveals a broader intrinsic cultural and political failure that suggests grave implications for the current state of crisis. Tracing the development of a national Mexican identity from the 1910 Mexican Revolution onward, Sanchez focuses on the indelible presence of violence and crime underlying the major works that contributed to a larger communal narrative.

Artful Assassins ultimately offers a panoramic overview of the evolution of Mexican arts and letters, as well as nationalism, by claiming murder and assassination as literary and cinematic motifs. The collapse of post-revolutionary political unity was presaged all along in Mexican culture, Sanchez argues. It need only to have been sought in the art of the nation.

Articulating Dissent analyses the new communicative strategies of coalition protest movements and how these impact on a mainstream media unaccustomed to fractured articulations of dissent.

Pollyanna Ruiz shows how coalition protest movements against austerity, war and globalisation build upon the communicative strategies of older single issue campaigns such as the anti-criminal justice bill protests and the women’s peace movement. She argues that such protest groups are dismissed in the mainstream for not articulating a ‘unified position’ and explores the way in which contemporary protesters stemming from different traditions maintain solidarity.

Articulating Dissent investigates the ways in which this diversity, so inherent in coalition protest, affects the movement of ideas from the political margins to the mainstream. In doing so this book offers an insightful and original analysis of the protest coalition as a developing political form.