Being Urban and Urbane in Safavid Iran | Kathryn Babayan

E458 | In the seventeenth century, the city of Isfahan flourished as the capital of the Safavid Empire. How did this vibrant and growing city shape the very nature of its inhabitants? In this episode, we speak to Kathryn Babayan about how the city’s residents learned to read its new architecture and social life and how this budding urbanity in turn developed new ways of being and belonging among its residents. She focuses specifically on anthologies, those personal collections of letters, paintings, and poems that survive today by the thousands. These anthologies, curated and preserved by urbanites over generations, are one of the finest testaments to the new subjectivities of the early modern city in the Safavid realms. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/04/UrbanIsfahan.html Kathryn Babayan's research focuses on the social and cultural history of the early-modern Persianate world. She specializes in Safavi history, the history of Shi'ism, gender studies and the history of sexuality. Her forthcoming book with Stanford University Press is titled The City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan. Nir Shafir researches the intellectual and religious history of the Middle East, from roughly 1400-1800, focusing on material culture and the history of science and technology. He is an assistant professor of history at UCSD. CREDITS Episode No. 459 Release Date: 8 April 2020 Recording Location: Budapest Audio editing by Chris Gratien Music: Blue Dot Sessions - Fifteen Street Images and bibliography courtesy of Kathryn Babayan and Nir Shafir available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/04/UrbanIsfahan.html