A History of Middle Eastern Modernism

Comparatively analyses modernism as a literary and artistic phenomenon in the Middle East, focusing on Arabic, Turkish, and Persian contexts.

The volume will appeal to Area Studies specialists working in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and other regional languages and to scholars of world literature, modern art and architecture, and postcolonial studies. It will serve as a primary reference text for the study of Middle Eastern modernism, an emerging field of inquiry.This comprehensive History examines Middle Eastern modernism through analyses of its roots and development across Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and other regional languages. An international team of contributors explains the modernist movement in the Middle East from its beginnings in the nineteenth century until today. Combining linguistic breadth and focused treatments of canonical works of Middle Eastern modernist art and literature, this History highlights remarkable connections in modernist form and content that link the Arab world to the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic as well as Qajar and Pahlavi Iran, Central Asia, and even India, often to the exclusion of Western modernist norms and experiments. Working within the broader framework of global modernisms while attending to the movement's local particularities, this volume establishes Middle Eastern modernism as a vibrant field of inquiry and a cornerstone for modernist studies more generally.