Afshin Matin-Asgari is Outstanding Professor of Middle East History at California State University, Los Angeles. He was born in Iran and completed his Ph.D. in Middle East history at University of California, Los Angeles. He was active in the international movement of Iranian students during the 1970s and took part in the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution. He is the author of Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah (2002), which is translated in Persian and published in Iran, and has authored more than twenty articles and book chapters on twentieth-century Iranian political and intellectual history.
Introduction: intellectual constructions of Iranian modernity; 1. Lineages
of authoritarian modernity: the Russo-Ottoman model; 2. The Berlin Circle:
crafting the worldview of Iranian nationalism; 3. Subverting
constitutionalism: intellectuals as instruments of modern dictatorship; 4.
Intellectual missing links: politicizing religion and translating
modernity; 5. The mid-century moment of socialist hegemony; 6.
Revolutionary monarchy, political Shi'ism, and Islamic Marxism; 7.
Conclusion: aborted resurrection: an intellectual arena wide open to
opposition.
