NATURE AND THE PERSIANATE WORLD

The course places itself in the general teaching programme as a necessary integration of the global perspectives on nature and the environment distinguishing the "Environmental Humanities" intellectual project in its entirety. More specifically, the course dialogues in particular with all the other courses focusing on the non-European environmental cultures and visions of nature. Given the transitional, cosmopolitan nature of the Persianate world, however, the course also critically engages with the "Western" theoretical core of the issues dealt with in the teaching programme, with the aim of questioning and debating any closed culturalist view.

Students will discover the complex and extensive discourse on nature and the environment produced in the Persianate world, acquiring an introductive (but not at all superficial) competence on its main philosophical, artistic, religious and literary aspects. Students will be encouraged to actively integrate the contents of the course with their previous intellectual experience, and they will be stimulated to engage with the themes of the course through critical thinking. They will also be provided with the necessary tools for independent further research in the field, especially in terms of connection with the wider Eurasian perspectives. Students will be able, at the end of the course, to articulate an autonomous and hopefully non-trivial discourse on the natural and environmental cultures of the Persianate space, and, especially, to connect it with the main global issues, in a historical and geographical perspective of continuity.

No specific knowledge or skills are required.

We will introduce and analyse, with a workshop-oriented approach and in an interwoven perspective (avoiding any rigid and homogeneous settings), the following thematic focal points, which will be developed and integrated with further materials and intellectual detours during our classes:

1) Conceptions of nature in the pre-Islamic Iranian world.
2) Cosmopolitan Medieval Islam and the perceptions of physis.
3) Philosophia naturalis in Persianate early modernity.
4) Nature, environment and visual arts (architecture, painting and cinema) in the Persianate world.
5) Revolutionary discourse, resistance and natural enviroment in Iran.

The following is a provisional approximate bibliography; rich bibliographic material will be provided at the beginning of the course and during our classes.

Abe, Satoshi (2013) "Conceptions of Nature in Iran: Science, Naturalism and Heteroglossia", Journal of Anthropological Research 69/2: 201-223.

Bagir, Zainal Abidin, and Najiyah Martiam. “Islam.” In Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Edited by Willis J. Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim, 79–87. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Foltz, Richard, and Manya Saadi-nejad, "Is Zoroastrianism an ecological religion?", SRNC 1.4 (2007) 413-430

Foltz, Richard C. “Islam.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Edited by Roger S. Gottlieb, 207–219. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Foltz, Richard C., ed. Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment: A Global Anthology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008.

Foltz, R. 1. (2003). Islam and ecology: A bestowed trust. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.]: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School.

Foltz, R. (2006), Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures, Oxford: Oneworld.

Habashi, Fathi (2000), "Zoroaster and the theory of four elements", Bull. Hist. Chem., 25/2: 109-115.

Haq, S. Nomanul. “Islam.” In A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Edited by Dale Jamieson, 111–129. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.

McGinnis Jon, "Arabic and Islamic natural philosophy and natural science", Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/arabic-islamic-natural/> ;

M. Naficy, Modernism and ideology in Persian literature: a return to nature in the poetry of Nima Yushij, University Press of America, 1997.

Yachkaschi, Ali, and Schirin Yachkaschi, Nature conservation and religion: An excursion into the Zoroastrian religion and its historical benefits for the protection of forests, animals and natural resources,Forest Policy and Economics,Volume 20, 2012, pp. 107-111.

The final exam will consist of a discussion with the instructor on the various themes of the course, with some tests during the course. Students who are not planning to attend the classes are kindly advised to contact the instructor in advance in order to arrange a dedicated program.

Traditional workshops, with the support of multimedia tools (powerpoint, etc.)

English

oral