Date:
Location:
PLEASE NOTE: Due to recent developments with COVID-19 this seminar is postponed.
"The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War: Faith, Firepower, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards"
Speaker:
Dr. Annie Tracy Samuel, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Chair:
Dr. Payam Mohseni, Project Director, Project on Shi’ism and Global Affairs. Lecturer, Department of Government, Harvard University; Lecturer, Islamic Studies, Harvard Divinity School.
Abstract:
This talk, and the book on which it is based, will analyze how Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has documented the history of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) in its own publications on the conflict. Examining the IRGC’s history of the war, Dr. Tracy Samuel’s research reveals, demonstrates that both the experience of the Iran-Iraq War and the project of composing the historical narrative of the war are fundamental to the IRGC and accordingly to understanding the organization. Their significance stems from several factors,including: the ways in which the war and the ongoing revolutionary process in Iran influenced one another; the war’s role in legitimizing and institutionalizing the IRGC and the new Islamic Republic as a whole; the expansion and evolution of the IRGC through its participation in the war into the powerful organization it is today; and the fact that the Revolutionary Guards view history as a vital tool for shaping national identity and power.
