Iran Arts Activism

(4 Credits)

How to develop an activist relation toward a foreign country placed in a diplomatic blockade with little to no visiting access and in face of a continuous flow of hyperbolic content about the country by the mainstream news media? This course answers this question in the case of Iran through investigating and developing an artistic and critical encounter with the rich and complex cinematic and moving image resources and archives of and about Iran that have emerged since the World War II, the Cold War, the Islamic republic in the aftermath of the anti-imperialist revolution in 1979, and the recent wave of cyberdemocracy after the disputed election in 2009. The course pays particular attention to an ethical conceptualization of "diplomacy" as instrumental in understanding of the course of democracy in Iran through art activism. In this course, we travel through two sharply contrasting sociopolitical and cultural eras before and after the revolution of 1979 through visiting a variety of cinematic movements and film titles. We investigate artistic negotiations as well as problematics of gender, ethnic, and racial representations through the prism of film analysis and social history. We draw from online and offline archival resources, philanthropic foundations, US National Archives, YouTube and digitized videos of documentary and fiction formats including video journalism and televisual commercials. While some films have been available commercially, a large volume of the media presented in class are rarely available in public. The course is organized primarily as workshop sessions of film and media analysis, brief lectures, and discussions of reading assignments. Course readings include a concise combination of primary archives, memoirs, historical surveys of Iranian cinema, introductory theories of art activism and public sphere, and important case studies of more recent digital media activism. Theoretical readings are chosen as historicized articles in narrative format in order to contextualize digital technologies and environments and to help students relate to culturally and historically unfamiliar situations. Assignments include weekly journals, viewing films outside classroom in small groups, group presentations, and short papers. No prior knowledge of Iran and/or Persian languages are required for a successful completion of this course.