Dr Saeed Talajooy gave BIPS 2019 Annual Lecture

On 25 November 2019, Saeed Talajooy gave BIPS 2019 Annual Lecture. The lecture, which was entitled ‘The Depiction of the Intelligentsia in Early Twentieth-Century Iranian Drama’ examined the history of the early engagements of Iranian drama with the roles and the challenges that the Iranian intelligentsia faced in negotiating the country’s path to modernisation between 1906 and 1922. It explored the two extreme poles of this depiction: (1) the educated reformer whose character echoed the qualities of such semi-mythical embodiments of intelligence and wisdom as Bozorgmehr and Borzuyeh, the physician, and (2) ‘the Westoxicated’ dandy who was characterised by mimicry and was frequently ridiculed in the cultural products of the following decades. The case studies included plays by Mortezaqoli Fekri (1869-1916), Ahmad Mahmoudi (1874 -1930), Mohammadreza Kordestani (Mirzadeh Eshqi, 1894 - 1924) and Hasan Moqaddam (1898 - 1925).