Literary cultures are inherently mobile, at times transgressing and disregarding, and at others reconstituting, cultural and national boundaries. Genres and literary forms, too, are vehicles for the mobility of ideas that strike chords in cultures and locales far from their origins. In Genres Without Borders, Marie Ostby examines twentieth-century Iranian literature and the hybrid genres and innovative constructions it has taken to reveal how these tensile modes move and shift across transnational space to European and American contexts. Ostby argues that, despite censorship and political isolation, Iranian literature has thrived across borders through strategic transformations in genre and form that emerged in response to these very constraints. Drawing on Persian miniature painting, travelogues, political cartoons, and social media, alongside more traditional literary forms, such as ghazal poetry, she traces their cross-border circulation that makes Persianate culture legible to Euro-American readers while maintaining a distinctive voice. Iranian writers don't simply adapt to Western expectations but actively reshape how global readers understand literary possibility. In this way, the crossing of cultural boundaries is both mirrored and embodied in the crossing of genre boundaries, connecting these writers to a world literary culture despite accelerating political attempts to isolate them.
Marie Ostby is an assistant professor of English and global Islamic studies at Connecticut College. She is author of numerous book chapters and articles in New Literary History, PMLA, and Iranian Studies.
Explores the movement of modern and contemporary Iranian literature across the world through the study of malleable genres and innovative literary forms.
"Ostby's intervention deserves our attention due to the rich tapestry of current theory it weaves together: from deft use of continental philosophy and postcolonial theorists to a thorough treatment of recent scholarship on the Persianate, and for its fresh treatments of well-known favorites like Forugh Farrokhzad and Marjane Satrapi to engagements of newcomers such as Solmaz Sharif and Fatemeh Ekhtesari, among many others." -Levi Thompson, translator of My Heart Became a Bomb. "Excellent research, thoughtful textual analysis, and a dynamic approach to the study of Iranian literature in a global context. . . . Ostby's research and exploration is unquestionably innovative and new." -Persis M. Karim, coeditor of Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian American Writers
