Is our world kaput?

The horror film or the science fiction book often starts like that, doesn’t it, with small seemingly unrelated facts, harbingers of the end? One fly buzzing around an eatery, settling repeatedly on uneasy diners’ hair and hands and plates; one crow sitting on a telephone wire, staring at kids on their skateboards; one mangled body found in a wood; and so on, until the bad things start developing>>>

Get busy living

Examples of “Propagation of Life”: Besides the obvious reproductive activities, propagation of Life is the main theme in myriad other activities such as raising another person’s child, working, creating life-promoting technologies (which include arts and medicine,) preserving resources via preventing overpopulation, and so on>>>

نوشتن به زبان افکار

ماه گذشته مشغول بازخوانی داستانهای صادق هدایت و نسل اول نویسندگان ایرانی در قرن بیستم بودم. برایم شگفت انگیز بود که جوانی که از کودکی با فرهنگ غرب آشنائی داشته و در نوجوانی به اروپا آمده، چگونه ممکن است «حاجی آقا» یا «علویه خانم» را بنویسد؟ آن زبان را از کجا می شناخت؟ آن عبارات را کجا شنیده بود؟ - و این ممکن نیست مگر با تحقیق و یادداشت برداری از زبان مردم >>>

کنفرانس واشنگتن

تعطیلات خوبی برای همه بود. واشنگتن هزینه ها را پرداخت و همه آن پیرمردان و پیرزنان(شما بفرمائید آقایان و خانم های جا افتاده) با ده ها کیلو کاغذ و لپ تاپ های خرابشان به شهرهای مختلف آمریکا و اروپا بر گشتند تا در باره فاز جدید مقاومت دوباره کتابهای رژیس دوبره Régis Debray را مرور کنند. آنها را ترجمه و بعد پرینت بگیرند>>>

Don't Break the Mirror!

Look into his mirror
And see yourself,
Oh, you, hiding your face
Behind turbans and beards
For years>>>

Outflanking Washington

There is an interest that both Iran and the United States hold in common: staving off military action, whether by the U.S. or Israel. From there, however, U.S. and Iranian motivations diverge; understanding this divergence is key to understanding why the talks thus far have failed. Iranian officials publicly dismiss but likely privately worry about the consequences of war, while U.S. officials often seem more worried about the consequences of military action>>>

«درست گفت» و «درست نوشت»

زبان فارسی در طول قرن‌ها شکل گرفته و تحول یافته است. ولی این تحولات در چهارچوب قواعدی صورت می‌گیرد که از آن‌ها تحت عنوان «دستور زبان» یاد می‌کنیم. دستور زبان نیز (در مورد زبان‌های طبیعی) از گویش مردمانی که به آن زبان سخن می‌گویند استخراج می‌شود و قراردادی نیست. به طریق اولی، نمی‌توان زبان طبیعی را با امر و نهی ساخت یا تغییر داد>>>

Persian "Capital"

This paper examines the new features of Hassan Mortazavi’s new translation of Marx’s Capital Volume 1 and the responses which it has received inside Iran. I argue that what led to this translation was both a dissatisfaction with the failure of the Iranian left during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and an interest on the part of a new generation of Iranian youth in philosophically based, non-dogmatic and constructive alternatives>>>

Things We Left Unsaid

Zoya Pirzad is a renowned Iranian-Armenian writer and novelist. She has written two novels and three collections of short stories, all of which have enjoyed international success. Things We Left Unsaid has been awarded multiple prizes, including the prestigious Houshang Golshiri award for Best Novel of the Year and her most recent collection of stories, The Bitter Taste of Persimmon, won the prize for Best Foreign Book of 2009 in France. She grew up in Abadan, where this novel is set, and now lives in Tehran>>>

Conceptualizing Gender (6)

Freud’s description of women as genitally defective and morally inferior to men, his concept of “penis envy” and his Oedipus complex that gave the highest position to the father, have been criticized by countless feminist writers. They have maintained that theories and methodologies of the psychoanalytic systems are patriarchal, misogynistic and anti-feminist. In Freud’s time, these ideas were also meticulously criticized for the first time by German psychiatrist / psychoanalyst Karen Horney and Austrian-British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein>>>

I am the change that I want to see

An impressive range of activists and scholars, artists and well-wishers had turned the venue into a Mecca to explore various nuances of change and its preludes from 18 to 21 May 2012. The discourses of the inaugural conference of the Society for Studies in Persian Culture and History ran the gamut. They ranged from health and literature to human rights and media. The conveners, performers and panelists included homeopathic doctors, poets, specialist in Islamic studies, television producers and rappers>>>