Research Proposal
Iranian Children's Literature
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Topic
Description Summary for proposed research in Modern Persian Studies. The proposed paper will seek to investigate Iranian culture
through examination of modern literature, art and other media intended for
children, starting with a brief historical survey looking at differences between
pre- and post-revolutionary Iran and examining the values and images stressed
during these periods. The differences between home and diaspora Iranian culture
experienced by children during their formative period of cultural identity will
be discussed with reference to Iranian school curriculum courses and other
material, parental influence and societal effects on children's development,
attitudes and world view.
Various source materials will be used including
children's writing and drawings, interviews with the Iranian community,
children's books and magazines, school curriculum texts, videos and cassettes,
satellite TV stations and on-line sites. This paper will draw on insights gained
during a BA(Hons) project investigating the effects of the combination of text
and illustrations.
Proposed Treatment of Topic:
Children's
literature can be treated as any other kind of art form and in terms of
understanding people and culture can be put on a par with any of these forms of
expression. As childhood is the formative period of cultural identity it is an
important area in the study of any culture, giving deep insights into mentality
and behavior. The proposed paper will start with a brief historical survey in
support of this, looking at differences in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran, and
examine the values and images stressed in children's literature, and then
continue to address the cultural divergence of post-revolutionary children's
literature as a reflection of the ideological differences and similarities
between home and diaspora Iranians. As illustrations play a big part in
children's literature these can also teach us a lot about underlying values and
what is deemed acceptable or unacceptable in society. The paper will also draw
on insights gained during a BA (Hons) project on the use of illustrations and
how they reflect and interact with text. The previous project dealt with
Sanskrit and Hindi text and created artistic and symbolic juxtaposition between
extracts from scriptures e.g. Bhaghavad Gita and photos of dance such as Kath
Kali and Divali performances with their intricate hand movements and story
telling. The focus of the present work however will be somewhat different as it
will use already existing works rather than seek to create new ones, and
although it may touch on traditional stories and their treatment, it will be
more concerned with contemporary work. Anomalies of continuity and other
contradictions will also be highlighted such as the attitude to dogs and their
representation. While Iranian school curriculum Farsi course books show several
pictures of a dog with a story stressing the need to be kind to animals, the
imported Cambridge Illustrated dictionary of English for children has every
single dog blacked out! There are also very few women depicted in this
dictionary (all with scarves drawn on) whereas Russian movies shown on Iranian
TV feature actresses who are not wearing scarves. Various children's texts will
be examined including stories, school curriculum textbooks and comics such as
the official school comics issued to students by Iranian government
schools.
The paper will seek to investigate divergent and arising culture
through children's literature and examine what is culture specific and what is
global as seen in fairy tales and historical stories translated from other
languages. An attempt will be made to compare the differences in literature and
cultural values of children living in Iran with those of diaspora children. For
example, in the Iranian education system there is emphasis on nature and the
seasons, natural phenomena, historical Iranian figures and nationalist issues
such as the revolution, martyrdom, development within Iran of roads, power
supply, public services etc. Children in different countries are exposed to
different role models and gender bias. In Iran a special celebration is held for
nine year old girls who are considered to have attained puberty or liability in
religious duty whereas boys are not liable until the age of fifteen. This is
portrayed as a wonderful event for girls, who are then expected to join the
ranks of responsible (if not exactly adult) society while the boys remain
irresponsible children. On the other hand boys are taught from an early age that
the most glorious future for them is to become a martyr for their country and
that this is their first duty in life. Two conflicting sets of messages are
being absorbed by a number of today's Iranian children; the ones in Iran are
socialized at school and by the media to support the revolution and to be
anti-American whereas their parents may be giving them completely opposite
messages at home by wearing jeans, using the internet, having a satellite dish
hidden in the bedroom and maybe aspiring to emigrate to the land of the Great
Satan itself! The generation which fled the revolution often have nostalgic
memories of the Iran of twenty years ago and would like to return, but feel that
their children have a better chance in life by being educated outside and living
in a "free" society. At the same time an effort is made to instill in the
children pride in their origins, language and culture. Many parents seem to have
conflicting feelings, especially with regard to daughters, who they would prefer
to grow up in traditional surroundings if it were possible.
All
societies reflect their attitudes through the education system, starting with
children's books, games, religious teaching and through the media of TV and
radio with specialized children's programs and of course through computer
programs. This proves a useful area to refer to for reflection of changing
attitudes as this is the first area targeted when governments and societies want
to change ideas, and gives a basic insight into the evolution of trends. We
could expect to see the development of these attitudes with the advent of the
next generation. Traditional children's literature provides openly moralistic
values which give continuing global guidance whereas the didactic or moralistic
thread running through modem children's literature could be blatant or more or
less subtle and may reflect, for example, a rising preoccupation with the
material aspect of early twenty first century living, with overpopulation,
exploitation of resources, ecology and green issues which may have had a
different emphasis in earlier periods of history, or with "political
correctness", seeking to redress perceived wrong attitudes of previous
generations. With the end of the cold war and the need of the USA and to a
lesser extent, European governments, to identify (or create) and define The New
Enemy, Islam has become the target of insidious propaganda; a dangerous trend
which we can expect to occupy center stage for some time to come and which has
already developed its own rhetoric with the keywords "terrorist", "muslim
fundamentalist", or "Islamist" playing a prominent part. We only have to look at
the media coverage of the European war in Bosnia where "Croats" (no religion
mentioned) and Serbs (no religion mentioned) and Muslims (no nationality
mentioned) were fighting each other, the situation in France, or the recent UK
anti4errorist law where anyone suspected of belonging to a militant muslim
organisation can be arrested for no other reason than suspicion, to see the
direction of perceptions vis-a-vis Islam. We must ask ourselves; what effect
will all this have on the impressionable minds of today's muslim children,
especially where they are living as minorities. Young minds soak up emotions and
undercurrents like sponges and have much more knowledge and understanding of the
world around them than we ever give them credit for. Modem psychological theory
shows that the importance of childhood as the formative period of cultural
identity has previously been undervalued. The trend now in behavioral psychology
is to look at the early conditioning and influences that people are subjected to
in childhood and examine how these affect their personality in adult life.
Source Materials:
The source materials presently available for
this research consist of books, magazines, newspapers, videos and cassettes from
Iran. It will be necessary to supplement these with additional materials in
order to research the comparative aspects of children`s literature and culture.
For this it is intended that reference will be made to the Iranian Culture
Center Library and that case studies and interviews will be drawn on, as well as
investigation of specialised children's libraries, Persian language schools,
courses, religious instruction classes or any other community services for
Iranian children. Outside of Iran a lot of pre-revolution books and videos are
available which cannot be found in Iran as well as the material produced by the
diaspora culture, e.g. films and music videos from Los Angeles which are watched
by Iranians living as far away as Japan. Other sources of material are the
Iranian satellite TV stations and on-line sites with Iranian publications and
information, such as Hamshahri Newspaper. Until the research is under way it
will be impossible to give a detailed account of all sources of information to
be drawn on. It is hoped that advice on sources of other relevant material
pertinent to the USA will be available from, for example, the Departrnent of
Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of Texas @ Austin, specialist
book companies such as Iranbooks, Bethesda, Maryland and Persian or bilingual
children's or community magazines published in the USA. Present materials
consist of the school curriculum Persian course and religious study course as
taught in Iranian junior schools and the monthly magazines issued by government
schools in Iran to junior school students, the Hamrah series of books dealing
with children's literature, a number of children's story books and various
children's writing and drawings and other miscellaneous items relevant to the
subject in books, magazines and newspapers. I would like to draw on my personal
experience within Iran to produce a definitive work in an academic
context.
Return to Research Center
Websites on Iran
Sorry they're not links - you have to cut and paste
some pages may be out of date
All of these are free unless
otherwise indicated Information on FREE downloading of RealAudio (for reception
of TV and radio broadcasts) can be found at http://www.real.com/
Website
of the Islamic Republic News Agency, with links to Persian-, Arabic- and English
Language newspapers, and Iranian TV and radio (using RealAudio)
http://www.irna.com/index.htm
Hamshahri, daily Persian-language Tehran
newspaper (requires special fonts) http://www.neda.net/hamshahri/7702 1
5/index.htm
Al-Islam, Shi'i website http://www.al-islam.org/index/
Shia Link http://www.shialink.org/
The Shi'a Homepage
http://www.shia.org/
Website of Ayatollah Khatemi, President of Islamic
Republic of Iran http://www.persia.org/khatami/index.html
Iranian
Cultural and Information Center, based at Stanford University, California
http://www.persia.org/
NetIran, on-line resources on Iran
http://www.netiran.com/
SalamIran, general on-line resources, official
site of the Iranian Embassy in Canada http://www.salamiran.org/
The
Iranian, on-line magazine http://www.iranian.com/
Cyber Iran, on-line
resources, music, news http://www.CyberIran.com/
Persian Radio, music,
CDs http://www.persianradio.com/home.html
Radio Free Europe and Radio
Liberty daily Persian broadcasts (2 hours daily) (using RealAudio)
http://www.rferl.org/bd/ir/index.html
BBC World Service daily Persian
broadcast (1 hour daily) (using RealAudio
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/index.shtm
IranNews, UK site for news and
affairs http://www.irannewswatch.com/index_frontpage.html
News about Iran
from Payvand New Service, culled from Western news agencies:
http://www.payvand.com/news/
News about Iran
www.iramania.com/news
News about Iran from Yahoo, culled from Western
news agencies, with many links:
http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/World/IranBBC
News about the
Middle East (TV and audio segments need RealAudio)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/englishlworld/middle_east/default.htm
BBC World
Service, shortwave frequencies and broadcast times for worldwide reception of
English-language service
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/freq/english.shtml
Website for Iran
Heritage Foundation, cultural events in the UK
http://www.iranheritage.com/
Columbia University's on-line resources for
the study of the Middle East
http://www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/area/MiddleEast/index.html#search
Afghanistan
on-line, information on and links to everything Afghani
http://www.afghan-web.corn/
Afghanistan-France, French site on
Afghanistan (English pages also available)
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/afghanistan_france/
From
Mariam's Sites at Thorntree, Lonely Planet www.tamasha.com
MERIA,
Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies
http://www.biu.ac.i1/SOC/besa/meria.html
Gul2OOO, on-line resources for
any aspect of all Gulf countries, Columbia University
http://gulf2OOO.columbia.edu
University of Southern California Muslim
Students' Association, on-line databases
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/
Encyclopedia Iranica
http://www.iranica.com/articles/contents.html
General Iran
www.persian.com
General Iran www.iranpage.com
Publishers
www.iranbooks.com/
Farsi Magazine
www.golchin1.com/index2.html
Publishers www.ibexpub.com
Site of
Saitama Uni`s Farsi gang
www.cit.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp/hobbies/iran/other_sites.html
Search Engine
www.ankaboot.com
More Sites, General:-
AOL:- www.aol.co.uk www.france.aol.com
BBC Knowledge TV Channel:- www.bbc.co.uk/knowledge
Destinations and Travel info:- www.lonelyplanet.com
Dictionary; 6 European Langs:- www.dictionary.com
Dynamo Interactive Learning Site:- www.bbc.co.uk/dynamo
English Study:- www.chompchomp.com
Geocities Clubs:- www.oocities.org/neighborhoods/clubs.html
Geography and Tourist info:- http://city.net
Greetings:- http://greetings.yahoo.com www.egreetings.com
Japanese Manga Site:- www.mangajin.com
Mahir's Pages:-www.oocities.org/Athens/Ithaca/4637/MahirCentral.html
and ................................4637/kissyou.html
www.mahircentral.com (it's slow)
http://members.xoom.com/_xoom/primall/mahir/index.html
Shockwave Mahir:- www.tfaleoburnett.com/staff/ikissyou
Slideshow Mahir:- www.mslide.com/launch.asp?mslide_id=1877
M's Fanclub:- http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/mahirsfanclubMahir Xoom:- http://members.xoom.com/mahiractive/ Sushi Page:- http://www.rain.org/~hutch/sushi.html
Travel Help & info:- www.oocities.org/TheTropics/2442/database.html
Travel Stories (Dean's Home Page):- www.usinternet.com/users/dsouba/travellists.htm
UFO Sites:- http://citadel.co.uk/citadel/eclipse/ www.futura/bufora/bufora.htm
Weather:- www.intellicast.com/weather/intl
Xoom Home Page:- www.xoom.com
Xoom search:- http://xoom.snap.com/search/directory
