Familial Undercurrents

Untold Stories of Love and Marriage in Modern Iran

Afsaneh Najmabadi (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

184 Seiten

2022
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-1515-4 (ISBN)

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Not long after her father died, Afsaneh Najmabadi discovered that her father had a secret second family and that she had a sister she never knew about. In Familial Undercurrents, Najmabadi uncovers her family’s complex experiences of polygamous marriage to tell a larger story of the transformations of notions of love, marriage, and family life in mid-twentieth-century Iran. She traces how the idea of “marrying for love” and the desire for companionate, monogamous marriage acquired dominance in Tehran’s emerging urban middle class. Considering the role played in that process by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century romance novels, reformist newspapers, plays, and other literature, Najmabadi outlines the rituals and objects---such as wedding outfits, letter writing, and family portraits---that came to characterize the ideal companionate marriage. She reveals how in the course of one generation men’s polygamy had evolved from an acceptable open practice to a taboo best kept secret. At the same time, she chronicles the urban transformations of Tehran and how its architecture and neighborhood social networks both influenced and became emblematic of the myriad forms of modern Iranian family life.

Afsaneh Najmabadi is Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University and author of Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran, also published by Duke University Press, and Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity.

Cast of Characters ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii
In Lieu of an Introduction 1
1. Marrying for Love 13
2. Objects: Letters, Wedding Clothes, and Photographs 41
3. Meanings of Marriage: Forming a Family or Providing Sexual Pleasure 75
4. Urban Transformations 111
Epilogue: Naming Marriage, Naming Kin 127
Notes 131
Bibliography 149
Index 155

Erscheinungsdatum	21.01.2022
Zusatzinfo	51 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	408 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-4780-1515-2 / 1478015152
ISBN-13	978-1-4780-1515-4 / 9781478015154
Zustand	Neuware