Aesthetics of Transition: Modernism and Tradition in Iranian Architecture, Film and Literature

Architecture, literature, and film are parallel and interconnected sites of transition, where local tradition invariably coexists and changes with global formal and thematic innovations. This course explores how Iranian writers, architects, and filmmakers of the early 20th century reflected socio-political change incumbent in the age of transition from tradition to modernity and modernism. We go beyond the traditional binaries of Orient and Occident, global or local and seek to explore cultural shifts as much to understand their global influences as their roots in inherited forms and narratives. Students read fiction, poetry, essays, and journalism, and study films and visual archives, while analyzing architecture as a built space, as it is represented in literature and depicted in cinema. Architecture mediated between past and present and underwent transformation itself. By comparing these different forms of discursive practice, we try to explore how words, images, spaces, and movement changed, and how they reveal Iran's complicated relationship with modernism and tradition. All materials are available in both Persian and English.