Political upheaval has marked Iran's history throughout the twentieth century. Wars, revolutions, coups and the impact of modernism have shaped Iran's historiography, as they have the country's history. Originally based on oral and written sources, which underpinned traditional genealogical and dynastic history, Iran's historiography was transformed in the early 20th century with the development of a 'new' school of presenting history. Here emphasis shifted from the anecdotal story-telling genre to social, political, economic, cultural and religious history-writing. A new understanding of the nation state and the importance of identity and foreign relations in defining Iran's place in the modern world all served to transform the perspective of Iranian historiography. Touraj Atabaki here brings together a range of rich contributions from international scholars who cover the leading themes of the historiography of 20th-century Iran, including constitutional reform and revolution, literature and architecture, identity, women and gender, nationalism, modernism, Orientalism, Marxism and Islamism.

Touraj Atabaki is Professor of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at Leiden University and Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

1- Note on Transliteration
2- Acknowledgment
3- Note on Contributors
4- Historiography of Twentieth Century Iran: Memory, Amnesia and Invention
Touraj Atabaki
5- Historiography and Crafting Iranian National Identity
Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi
6- Memory and Amnesia in the Historiography of the Constitutional Revolution
Abbas Amanat
7- Disintegrating the "Discourse of Disintegration": Some Reflections on the Historiography of the Late Qajar Period and Iranian Cultural Memory
Oliver Bast
8- Agency and Subjectivity in Iranian National Historiography
Touraj Atabaki
9- The Nation's Poet: Ferdausi and the Iranian National Imagination
Afshin Marashi
10- The Pahlavi School of Historiography on the Pahlavi Era
Kaveh Bayat
11- Architectural Historiography 1921-1942
Kamran Safamanesh
12- The Paranoid Style in Iranian Historiography
H. E. Chehabi and Ahmad Ashraf
13- Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Historiography of Modern Iran
Mana Kia, Afsaneh Najmabadi and Sima Shakhsari
14-Marxism, Historiography and Historical Consciousness in Modern Iran: A
Preliminary Study
Afshin Matin-asgari
15- Islamist Historiography in Post-Revolutionary Iran
Kamran Scot Aghaie
16- Index