Marie Huber
Building 260, Room 106
Phone: 650 723 6837
marieh@stanford.edu
Assistant Professor of Persian and Comparative Literature
On leave
Harvard University, Ph.D., Comparative Literature (June 2013)
University College London, M.A. (with distinction), Comparative Literature (September 2003)
University of Oxford, B.A. (1st class Honours), Persian with Islamic Studies/History (June 2002)
COMPLIT 238A Uneasy Modernity: 20th Century Persian Poetry and the Specter of Tradition
Drawing on poems, theoretical texts, and audio-visual materials, this course seeks to retrace the struggle for a modern poetic language in Iran from the time of the Constitutional Revolution (1905/6) to the Islamic Revolution (1979), and beyond. Topics include: the unresolved relationship between tradition and modernity; poetry as a vehicle of enlightenment and revolution; the quest for a new poetic expression of love; the construction of historical memory through literature; responses to the experience of modern alienation; the figure of the poet as dissident; and the subversive force of poetic form itself. Poets include: Iraj Mirzā, Mohammad Taqi Bahār, Nimā Yushij, Ahmad Shāmlu, Sohrāb Sepehri, Mehdi Akhavān Sāles, Forugh Farrokhzād, and Esmā'il Kho'i. Secondary readings include texts by Theodor W. Adorno, Mikhail Bakhtin, Emile Benveniste, Maurice Blanchot, Michel de Certeau, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Paul Ricœur. Taught in English.
