I am pleased to introduce the special topic of “Persianate Pasts; National Presents: Persian Literary and Cultural Production in the Twentieth Century” in this issue.
Has the twentieth century rise of nation-states in the Persianate cosmopolis made the transregional Persianate world analytically irrelevant? Or do Persianate pasts endure in different ways in the modern period? The studies featured in the issue foreground the uneven and complex nature of this historical transition and locate the lingering presence of the Persianate in twentieth-century Afghanistan, Iran, India, the Soviet East, and the Caucasus. They neither take the nation-state as a teleological outcome, nor do they romanticize the premodern Persianate as an overarching system from Bosnia to Bengal. Ultimately, these contributions demonstrate how the Persianate was reconfigured in new guises both nationally and trans-nationally. It is our hope that this special topic opens windows for further inquiries into all subfields of Persianate studies including music, ethics, law, and beyond.
In this issue we also introduce a series of short reviews of books written in Persian and anticipate extending this feature to include books written in other non-European and regional languages. We will encourage more authors who are based in Iran and neighboring countries to contribute to such reviews, and hope that this would be a first step toward expanding publishing opportunities in the journal for scholars from the region.
