Date of Award

Spring 5-16-2026

Document Type

Honors Project

University Scholars Director

Dr. Joshua Tom

First Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Alissa Walter

Keywords

Feminism, Middle East, Post-Colonial Studies, Literary History, Iran, Ashura

Abstract

This paper explores the evolution of Battle of Karbala symbolism in the literary imagination of Iranian feminist writers from the late 1960s through the 1980s - or in other words, across a society-altering revolution and the establishment of an authoritarian theocratic regime in Iran. I begin my analysis by considering Simin Daneshvar’s Savushun, a cornerstone feminist novel which makes heavy use of Karbala symbolism to encapsulate both nationalist and feminist hopes of liberation in the pre-revolutionary period. I continue my analysis by considering a selected poem from each of a pairing of prominent Iranian writers: Simin Behbahani and Tahereh Saffarzadeh. I here argue that the two authors’ rhetorical uses of the language of Karbala in their individual writing do not present a unified imagination, and rather demonstrate a splintering of the symbol’s rhetorical use between national and religious symbol.

Comments

A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University Scholars Honors Program.

Copyright Status

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Additional Rights Information

Copyright held by author.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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