Video: Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene
An insightful lecture on the artistic and historical links between Persian, or Iranian, culture and those of the Europe and the United States.
As one of the oldest and greatest world civilizations, Persia, now modern Iran, has long captured the attention and imagination of outsiders. Even when the heart of Persian culture fell to foreign empires, those rulers tended to adopt Persian traditions rather than suppress them. This proved true for Alexander the Great, the Arab Caliphates, and the Mongol Ilkhanate. All came and went, but not before their societies embraced Persian art, literature, and social customs to a remarkable degree. It’s no surprise, then, that the Persian Empire in its many iterations has played a sometimes unseen but highly influential role in worldwide philosophy and history.
While Persia’s contributions to global civilization may have occasionally gone unnoticed, it has also been a subject of fascination for European and American artists and intellectuals. To these thinkers and creatives, Persia represented both the familiar and the exotic. This trend was especially pronounced from the 17th century on. Artists both consumed Persian cultural products, such as the epic Shahnameh, and created their own art based on Persian imagery, poetry, and history. In some cases, like the Orientalism trend in painting and literature, their works were not grounded in reality so much as fanciful imagination. But the overall result was a mixing of ideas on both sides and a new appreciation in the West for non-European cultures. It led to a cascading sequence of influence that ultimately inspired more modern leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
In this lecture from the Library of Congress, author Hamid Dabashi explores these ideas and more as they appear in his book, Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene. Toward the latter half of the video, Dabashi also takes time to answer questions from the audience. Whether you are a lifelong student of Persian history or just an interested passerby, his speech is sure to captivate.
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