EUME
2023/ 2024

Laetitia Nanquette

A History of Publishing in Iran from the 1950s to the Present

Laetitia Nanquette is Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. She obtained her BA in Philosophy and Literature from Sorbonne University, studied Persian at INALCO-Paris, followed by a year in Iran, and then completed her MA and PhD at SOAS, University of London (2011). She had a Fulbright Visiting Fellowship at Harvard University, before moving to Australia and UNSW, where she has been researching and teaching since 2013. She works on modern and contemporary Persian literature in a sociological perspective. Her second book Iranian Literature After the Islamic Revolution: Production and Circulation in Iran and the World was published in 2021 by Edinburgh University Press. She is currently working on a new project on the history of publishing in Iran, going back to the 1950s. She also translates short stories and poems of Persian literature into English and French. In the academic year 2023/24, she is an associated EUME Fellow.

A History of Publishing in Iran from the 1950s to the Present

Nanquette’s work has been focused on the post-revolutionary period for many years. In this new project, she is linking her work on the Iranian literary field after the revolution to her interests in publishing and book history. She is writing a history of the Iranian publishing industry starting from the 1950s, and extending to contemporary developments in digital publishing. The 1950s represents a pivotal moment for the publishing industry, with the foundation of cultural institutions like Bongah-e Tarjomeh va Nashr-e Ketab (The Institute for Translation and Publication), as well as publishing houses like the Franklin Book Project and Amir Kabir Publications. This is also a moment of complex intertwining between publishing and the state. One focus of this project will be to analyse the evolution of the relations of publishing to the political field and the state. It will study the historical context, legal framework and state interventions that have shaped the publishing industry in the last 70 years, and make light on the dynamics between publishing and the state under two very different regimes. This history will be based on archives from the National Library of Iran, primary and secondary sources in Persian, magazines and newspapers, databases and bibliographies, reports and statistics, as well as interviews. 

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