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This book comes at a time when historical revisionism is on the rise. Contributing to the growing recognition of the uses and misuses of history in authoritarian contexts, this work offers unique insights into the complexities of such attempts in Iran under the Pahlavi and Islamic Republic. It historicises official narratives of the past as constructed in schoolbooks and traces their change since the 1920s. It conceptualises history textbooks as the state's autobiography, implicated in the struggles for legitimacy and central to the production of political myths.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: Politics of Teaching the Past.- Chapter 2: The Authorship of School History Textbooks under the Pahlavi.- Chapter 3: Like Weapons for the Military : Textbooks in the Islamic Republic.- Chapter 4: Constitutional Revolution as Taught in Schoolbooks under the Pahlavi.- Chapter 5: The Islamic Revolution of 1906?.- Chapter 6: Remembering the Anglo-Russian Past in Iran: History Textbooks under the Pahlavis (1925-1979).- Chapter 7:Mosaddeq in the Words of the State: From the Pahlavi to the Islamic Republic.- Chapter 8: State Histories: Concluding Reflections.
About the author
Dr. Yasamin Alkhansa
is an Associate Researcher at the University of Sussex. She is a fellow of the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) and a former visiting scholar at the University of St. Andrews, School of History, Department of Iranian Studies.
Summary
This book comes at a time when historical revisionism is on the rise. Contributing to the growing recognition of the uses and misuses of history in authoritarian contexts, this work offers unique insights into the complexities of such attempts in Iran under the Pahlavi and Islamic Republic. It historicises official narratives of the past as constructed in schoolbooks and traces their change since the 1920s. It conceptualises history textbooks as the state's autobiography, implicated in the struggles for legitimacy and central to the production of political myths.
