This book analyzes the role of intellectuals as the prime mediators between the forces of tradition and modernity in twentieth century and twenty-first century Iran.

In Mapping the Role of Intellectuals in Iranian Modern and Contemporary History, Jahanbegloo and contributors examine the role of Iranian intellectuals in the history of Iranian modernity. They trace the contributions of intellectuals in the construction of national identity and the Iranian democratic debate, analyzing how intellectuals balanced indebtedness to the West with the issue of national identity in Iran. Recognizing how intellectual elites became beholden to political powers, the contributors demonstrate the trend that intellectuals often opted for cultural dissent rather than ideological politics.

Part I: Iranian Intellectuals,Nationalism and State: from Qajar to Early Pahlavi

Chapter 1: Amir Kabir: A Reformist and Pioneer of Modernization in the Traditional State

Chapter 2: Crafitng Iranian National Imaginary:The Interwar Period (1918-1935)

Chapter 3: British Whiggism and the Iranian Enlightenment in the 19^th Century

Partt II: Iranian Intellectuals:Between Traditional Values and Modern State

Chapter 4: Third-Worldist Iranian intellectuals: Shariati and Ale-Ahmad

Chapter 5: Sadeq Hedayat: Iranian Fiction and the Experience of Modernity

Chapter 6: Rethinking the Legacy of Intellectual-Statesmen in Iran

Part III: Women Intellectuals in Pre-and Post-Revolutionary Iran

Chapter 7: Women’s rights in Iran’s experiment with modernity

Chapter 8: “And, here I am,” Forugh Farrokhzad and Modernity

Chapter 9: Simin Daneshvar: The Forging of an Intellectual

Part IV: Iranian Left: From Marxist Intellectualism to Revolutionary Romanticism

Chapter 10: The perplexity of the Iranian Marxist Intellectuals in this 1960s and 1970s

Chapter 11: Intellectual Statesmen and the Making of Iran’s Illiberal Nation-State(1921-1926)