The Liminal Figure of the Angel in the National Imagination of Early 1900s in Iran

The presentation aims to visually complicate the gender aspect of Iran' nationalism, theorized by Afsaneh Najmabadi and Mohammad Tavakoli-targhi. Through engagement mostly with archives of early photography, but also with those of various early newspapers' logos and picture-narratives (such as Sur-i Israfil, Nahid, Mulla Nasr al-Din), this presentation traces the multifaceted gendering of the symbol/figure of (mother)nation and the eventual erasure of this multiplicity – in collapsing of its different connotations into one – to bring about the ideal modern gendered citizen of the nation.

A recently-accessible archive of late Qajar and early Pahlavi photographs in London, along with the archives of the same period's newspapers of Iran in the collection of the Library of Congress in Iran (Kitabkhana-i Majlis) and National Library (Kitabkhana-i Milli) and Archives of Iran. The cross-referencing of the mediums in this research will complicate the notions of fantasy and reality in the construction of the figure of the ideal woman.