Nationalism has played an important role in the cultural and intellectual discourse of modernity that emerged in Iran from the late nineteenth century to the present, promoting new formulations of collective identity and advocating a new and more active role for the broad strata of the public in politics. The essays in this volume seek to shed light on the construction of nationalism in Iran in its many manifestations; cultural, social, political and ideological, by exploring on-going debates on this important and progressive topic.

Meir Litvak is Associate Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern History, Director of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Shi‘i Scholars of Nineteenth Century Iraq: The ‘Ulama’ of Najaf and Karbala’ and published widely on modern Shi`ism.