This issue of Iranian Studies features a special issue on materiality in Iran, guest edited by Dr. Kusha Sefat of the University of Tehran; a roundtable on the Women, Life, Freedom movement and the political activities of the Iranian diaspora, edited by Dr. Mohsen Mobasher of the University of Houston; as well as nine additional individual articles and four book reviews.
I would like to thank Dr. Sefat for bringing together invaluable scholarship prefaced by his comprehensive introduction. I would like to acknowledge that Maryam Ghodrati’s ‘Materiality of Traumatic Experience and the Limits of Representation in Hassan Bani Ameri’s Gonjeshkha Behesht ra Mifahmand (Sparrows Understand Heaven)’ which was meant to be part of this special issue, was mistakenly published in issue 57.4. The contributors to this special issue offer a rich palette of studies ranging in focus, including on the material realities and national narrative surrounding artificial intelligence; the impact of the transition from traditional floor heating, the korsi, to portable oil heaters on the material organization of domestic spaces; an examination of the material aspects of the Pahlavi state’s Ahvāz pipe mill project; an ethnography of opium production; an anthropological study of the state’s efforts to maintain its oil sites against the dual challenge of sanctions and dust winds; a reconsideration of environmental activism.
I am equally grateful to Dr. Mobasher for his work on the fascinating roundtable on the Iranian diaspora's political activities linked to the Women, Life, Freedom movement. Our guest editors have worked tirelessly with me, the journal's Associate Editors for Social Sciences, Dr. Norma Moruzzi and Dr. Paola Rivetti, and the Deputy Editor, Dr. Farshad Sonboldel, through stages of review and revision. I thank them for their productive collaboration that expands the parameters of the journal's interdisciplinary scholarship.
We have other special issues and roundtables in the works, which will appear in next year's issues.
