Introduction

Hamid Dabashi's writings have cast new light upon some of the most spectacular, world-historical changes and dynamics of the post-Cold war era—the Iranian revolution, the collapse of communism, the wars in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the attacks of September 11, 2001, the "global war on terrorism," and The Green Movement in Iran. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His work spans subjects ranging from Islamic philosophy and political ideology to Iranian art and Persian literature, from Sufism and Orientalism to Iranian and world cinema and contemporary Arab and Muslim visual arts; and from postcolonial theory and globalization to imperialism and public affairs. Dabashi narrates a world that one needs to hear poetically. Just like the films he admires most, he plays with the framing of reality, entering and leaving it from different angles, adopting different perspectives, moving to other unexpected (dis)locations.