Filled with fighting, feasting, and other “masculine” activities, Firdawsi’s Shahnama (completed ca. 1010) often seems to leave women in the dust, both literally and figuratively. In fact, many scholars use the epic as an exemplar of sexism with which to contrast the more positive depictions of female characters by later poets, including Nizami (d. 1209) and Amir Khusraw (d. 1325). Although these studies are valid, contemporary scholarship on the text can nevertheless benefit from a less polemical approach to its portraits of women. This panel will build on previous work on this subject by examining the wide range of roles for women in the realm of the Shahnama. The first paper, “From Ill-Starred to Auspicious: Depictions of Daughters in Firdawsi’s Shahnama,” will rely on gender and kinship theory to address the father-daughter dynamic in the work, arguing that despite the ideal in which a daughter was submissive and totally obedient to her father, some deviation from this norm could be tolerated.
Chair
Institutional Affiliation :
Academic Bio:
Alyssa Gabbay is a cultural historian whose work on the medieval and early modern Persianate world sits at the intersections of literature, gender, and history. Dr. Gabbay received her Ph.D. in Classical Persian Literature and Islamic Civilization in 2007 from the University of Chicago's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, with a secondary specialization in medieval Islamic history. Her monograph, Islamic Tolerance: Amir Khusraw and Pluralism, will be published by Routledge's Iranian Studies series in January 2010. She is a visiting scholar at the University of Washington.
Discussant
Institutional Affiliation :
Academic Bio :
Dr Firuza Abdullaeva is a graduate of the Iranian Philology Department, Faculty of Oriental Studies, St Petersburg University, she received her PhD in Iranian philology and Islamic Studies with her thesis on the earliest Persian Commentary on the Qur’an (Tafsīr-i Qur’ān Pāk)” in 1989. She was an Associate Professor at the University of St Petersburg when she joined the Cambridge Shahnama Project in 2002.
From 2005 she has been Lecturer in Persian Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Keeper of the Firdousi Library of Wadham College. Her main research interests include Classical and Modern Persian literature, Islamic codicology and Medieval Persian book art in particular.
First Presenter
Institutional Affiliation :
Academic Bio :
Alyssa Gabbay is a cultural historian whose work on the medieval and early modern Persianate world sits at the intersections of literature, gender, and history. Dr. Gabbay received her Ph.D. in Classical Persian Literature and Islamic Civilization in 2007 from the University of Chicago's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, with a secondary specialization in medieval Islamic history. Her monograph, Islamic Tolerance: Amir Khusraw and Pluralism, will be published by Routledge's Iranian Studies series in January 2010. She is a visiting scholar at the University of Washington.
Concise Paper Title :
From Ill-Starred to Auspicious: Depictions of Daughters in Firdawsi’s Shahnama
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) :
From Afrasiyab’s angry declaration that “Any man who has a daughter behind a veil is ill-starred, though he wear a crown,” to Haftvad’s benign, slightly contemptuous affection for his female offspring (“He had one daughter, no more, whom he loved dearly although he reckoned daughters of no account”), to Ardashir [Bahman]’s appointing of his daughter, Humay, as his successor, Firdawsi’s Shahnamah exhibits a wide range of attitudes towards daughters. Yet although scholars such as Dick Davis have addressed the father-son dynamic in the work, its depictions of daughters remains relatively unexplored territory. Relying on gender and kinship theory, this paper will examine a series of portraits of daughters in the Shahnamah. It will conjecture that although an ideal clearly existed in which a daughter was submissive and totally obedient to her parents, especially her father (exemplified by the jeweler Mahyar and his daughter, Arzu, who was to become one of Bahram Gur’s wives), some deviation from this norm or even rebellion could be tolerated. Occasionally, girls were able to acquire power and exercise agency despite or even because of their fathers’ attitudes. Among other issues, this paper will explore the degree to which the examples cited reflect Zoroastrian and/or Sassanian mores and the interplay between the text and the cultural and religious milieus from which it arose. In addition to adding to the existing scholarship dealing with depictions of women in the Shahnamah, this study aims to shed light on the varying ways in which daughters came to be regarded in the Muslim world during Islam’s Middle Period.
Second Presenter
Institutional Affiliation :
Institute of Iranian Studies, University of Goettingen
Academic Bio :
Kumiko Yamamoto received her Ph.D. in Persian Literature from the University of London and has taught Persian and English at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and The University of Tokyo. She has written widely on Iranian literature and cinema, including The Oral Background of Persian Epics (Leiden, 2003).
Concise Paper Title :
Unfolded Self: Women in the Naqqali Tradition
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) :
The present paper examines what roles women play in the naqqâli tradition or professional storytelling in Iran, with special reference to Morshed Abbas Zariri's Dâstân-e Rostam va Sohrâb: Ravâyat-e Naqqâlân (ed. by Jalil Dustxâh, Tehran, 1990). In Ferdowsi's Shahnama (completed in ca. 1010), women play fairly limited roles: they pass as either interchangeable royal mothers or non-Iranian seductresses, who not infrequently threaten political as well as narrative equilibrium, even if they eventually settle into the more authentic roles. They constitute topoi, spaces and conditions of the narrative, rather than active players in the plot developments, which are, inevitably, played by the male figures. This classic opposition between the female characters and the male in the Shahnama, however, is almost entirely reversed in Zariri's accounts, where Tahmine often outshines her husband, Rostam in her bold, "heroic," and imaginative undertakings. Such reversal of gender roles in naqqâli will spawn questions as to, for example, the narrative mechanism of naqqâli that allows it happen, intriguing interplays between the Shahnama as the inviolable text and the storytellers' interpretative adventures, and precarious positions that the female figures have been called forth to hold between text and society. Loosely drawing on gender theory and narratology, the paper will seek to answer these and other questions that would ultimately relate to the self, unfolding itself in the complex processes of storytelling.
Thid Presenter
Institutional Affiliation :
University of California, San Diego
Academic Bio :
Rana Salimi is a third-year PhD student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She obtained her first BA in Tehran, Iran and her second BA in Waterloo, Canada, both in Theatre. She received her Masters degree from the University of Toronto. Besides acting, directing, and dramaturgy in theatre, Rana has taught, and still teaches, Theatre and Farsi in UCSD, and in the Iranian School of San Diego.
Concise Paper Title :
A New Voice on Public Stage: Gordafarid, the first female naqa’l in Islamic Republic of Iran
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) :
When a naqqal takes his short cane (choobdast) and maneuvers the stage singing and declaiming, his re-enactment of the heroes and champions of the Persian folklore mesmerizes the audience. Although the minimalist setting and the audience’s familiarity with the stories may suggest otherwise, a naqqal’s mastery of movement and vocal changes blurs the boundaries of fiction and reality, and takes the viewers to the world of myth.
However, when the naqqal is a woman, her breath-taking performance of heroines of Shahnameh shocks the community and redefines the Islamic stage rules.
There is no doubt that naqqali empowers the Naqqal for a variety of reasons: 1) being a solo-performance, naqqali requires the naqqal to perform a variety of male and female characters, and thus physical and vocal adeptness is necessary, 2) the location of the performance, a street or a coffeehouse as opposed to a theatre building (in traditional settings) requires a vast knowledge of the community and its cultural interests, as well as a high ability for improvisation to meet the audience’s requests, 3) getting the audience’s attention and sustaining their interest in the performance requires the naqqal to engage the viewers through eye-contact, addressing individuals among the audience, or making references to relevant social issues.
Investigating the characteristics of naqqali sheds light on the masculinity of this art form in a culture with strong religious roots, regardless of the state’s policies towards religion at any given time. Therefore, it seems only natural that a theocratic government, such as that of the Islamic Republic of Iran, would set more restrictions on female public performance. It is true that the Islamic government has never prohibited actresses from appearing on stage and yet, it has disallowed women’s singing or dancing in public. Indeed through censoring the details of the productions, the performative arts’ boundaries have been redefined.
It is in this social context that the appearance of young women naqqals on public stages in Iran seems revolutionary. The scarcity of female naqqals throughout history, and their emergence within the past decade, is the topic of my discussion. The media has called Fatemeh Habibi Zad (also known as Gordafarid) the first female naqqal in Iranian history, or at least in Iran after the revolution. In this paper, I will reflect on Habibi Zad’s fascinating experience as a naqqal, and the audience’s reception of her work. But more so, I will analyze her claiming power and identity in a culture that has stigmatized female self-expression and autonomy, and the ways in which naqqali has been rendered into an opportunity for women, within the boundaries of religion and cultural taboos.
Fourth Presenter
Academic Bio :
Dr. Nahid Pirnazar is a lecturer of Iranian Studies at UCLA, teaching the History of Iranian Jews and Judeo-Persian Literature. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 2004, in Iranian Studies with an emphasis on Judeo-Persian literature. She has two M.A. degrees, one in 1999 from UCLA in Iranian Studies and the other from Tehran University in English as a Second Language in 1975. In addition, since 1997 to the present time she has been teaching at UCLA, in subjects which include the Persian language and literature from introductory to advanced levels. Dr. Nahid Pirnazar is the founder and president of The House of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts, an academic organization which collects, preserves, transliterates and publishes Judeo-Persian manuscripts. She is also a contributor to the Brill Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World as well as Encyclopedia Iranica. Dr. Nahid Pirnazar has served on the Executive Board of Habib Levy Cultural & Educational Foundation, since 1997, as its Director of Academics, Research & Publications. Her research articles on different aspects of Judeo-Persian literature and the culture and national Identity of Iranian Jews have been reflected in academic publications such as Irano-Judaica, Iranshenasi and Rhavard. She is also a contributor to the Brill Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World as well as Encyclopedia Iranica.
Concise Paper Title :
Djalal Khaleqi Motlaq’s Women of the Shahnameh: An Introduction
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) :
This paper will introduce a forthcoming translation into English of “Die Frauen im Schahname,” written by Professor Djalal Khaleghi Motlagh, the renowned Shahnameh scholar, as his Ph.D. dissertation in 1971. The book has been translated from German to English by Dr. Brigitte Neuenschwander, edited by Dr. Nahid Pirnazar and will be published in the coming year, entitled Women of the Shahnameh.
As one of the pioneering Iranian academic scholars focusing on women, Khaleghi presents a different aspect of the Shahnameh to the reader, aside from the kings, heroes and the demons. Not only does he focus on the women in the mythical and heroic parts of our national epic, but he also reflects on the personal life of the main male characters as described by Ferdowsi.
Khaleghi, in displaying the role of women in the Shahnameh, shows his foresight, on Women and Gender Studies issues, which these days are treated as independent fields in many academic institutions. The author has been conducting additional research on the subject through out the years which are translated into Enlgish from Persian and inserted in the text by the editor Dr. Nahid Pirnazar. In addition, the original Persian examples of the poetry used in the text as well as references to later articles of the author in other publications, in relation to the subject, are inserted by the editor. The content of Women of the Shahnameh includes:
1) A clarification of the role of the female gender within the heavenly mythology of Iran; 2) A summary of the stories of the most important women of the Shahnameh, comparing them to others from ancient to medieval sources insofar as they were known and accessible to the author at the time of writing;
3) An outline of the role, importance, and fate of each female character of the Shahnameh in the various periods of their lives, e.g. as a girl, wife, and mother, both within the family framework and society as a whole. Such an approach constitutes a valuable addition to an area of inquiry developing into a significant body of scholarship about Iranian women in English language.
Posted in
