درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present article aims to analyze Ann Pancake’s Strange as this Weather Has Been through the lens of ecofeminist theories. The study explores the connections between women and nature by focusing on three key areas: inherent affinity and dualism, agency and intrinsic values, and conflict with technology. The article addresses how the novel expresses and upholds ecofeminist concepts and how the female characters challenge the male-dominated power structure by participating in the ecofeminist movement through their actions and words as Earth's guardians. Greta Gaard’s ecofeminist ideas form the theoretical foundation of this research. The article highlights how the primary female characters in the novel exhibit a profound bond with their land and work to safeguard it as guardians of the Earth, embodying resilience, empowerment, and an enduring spirit, and manifest self-confidence and a deep connection with nature. Through this affinity, they portray a sense of belonging and identity with nature. It laments that technology, which is manipulated in capitalist and patriarchal ideologies, treats nature merely as a commodity. The narrative also showcases and criticizes the dire environmental and societal consequences of mountaintop removal mining as a harmful technological practice in Appalachia, which, on a macro level, stands for the world.

This paper aims to analyze Doris Lessing's narrative techniques to explore how she developed the discourse of her stories and depicted her contemporary realities in her story worlds. It seeks to address the question of whether there is a relationship between her real world and her storytelling, and whether her ideology and personal background influenced her narrative approach. To accomplish this goal, we will analyze the novels The Grass is Singing and Martha Quest using Gavin's Text World Theory, a cognitive approach that provides a framework encompassing three levels of analysis: Discourse World, Text World, and Sub-Worlds. Our analysis reveals that the discourse of her stories closely mirrors her real-life discourse, indicating a direct relationship between her real worlds and her storytelling. Lessing’s intricate descriptions of world-building elements, such as time, locations, characters, objects, and actions within the story, serve to advance the narrative forward through both material and existential processes. Moreover, her use of sub-worlds to express her yearning for freedom and justice reflects her critical viewpoints on the oppressive systems prevalent in her time, particularly colonization and racial issues. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that from 1944 to 1956, her storytelling method was influenced by her communist ideology. In essence, the concepts and themes represented in her stories emerge as reflections of her real-world experiences, effectively conveyed through her narrative techniques.

The present study argues the relationship between the media’s power and the reconstruction of subjectivity in Zubaida’s Window, a novel by Iqbal Al-Qazwini. It is a description of the tortured psyche of the exiled woman and her attempts to reconstruct her displaced subjectivity among different versions of media’s Baudrillardian simulacra and to distinguish reality from unreality. Media’s depictions of death and war’s destruction can generate xenophobia among natives who may blame immigrants for their social problems and disturbing spatial harmony. Qazwini re-emphasizes that xenophobia can destroy an immigrant’s self-perception and trigger the preference for death. Moreover, the hyperreal versions of truth and ignoring the subaltern’s voice and revelation affect an immigrant’s mentality negatively and persuade her/him to prefer loneliness and death to have social interactions. This article focuses on the significance of media in the reconstruction of subjectivity, intensification of anti-immigration views, and the dark sides of modern war based on the interrelated theories of David Miller and Derek Gregory. Considering the issues of compulsory displacement and territoriality, Miller focuses on the ethical/political dimensions, while Gregory examines the causes of armed conflicts and geopolitical factors. By applying such an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers investigate Zubaida’s mental downfall, her failure in the reconstruction of subjectivity, and her inability to reconcile different self-images. This article examines her ceaseless effort to reverse the colonial power of media by adhering to her homeland’s memories, or watching her country’s news through TV’s representation, or ignoring spatial interactions, and lack of interest in self-renovation.

The present paper deals with the historical overview and the reception of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets in contemporary Iran. The authors examine the chronology of Persian translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (both scattered and book-length ones) during a century which is a considerable period of time in the examination of the reception of any author in another culture. As poetry is not the most popular genre in Persian translation, the Persian translations of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets suffered from a lot of fluctuations. It was in the latter part of the nineteenth century, a turning-point in the history of the country, that Shakespeare was introduced into Iranian audience for the first time. It started with scattered translations and ended in book-length ones. This study indicates early Persian interest in Shakespeare’s Sonnets which was followed by a lull. The reason behind it was two-fold: the translation of foreign poetry was dominated by French and Russian languages, and the rich tradition of Persian poetry does not feel the need to translate foreign poetry. The reception of Shakespeare’s Sonnets was followed by renewed interest in 1998-2017 and finally book-length translations began to thrive. All in all, Shakespeare’s Sonnets did not have a great influence on Persian poetry, as it was expected.

A developed financial system, which ensures the provision, allocation, and direction of resources toward productive economic sectors, is one of the key drivers of economic growth and development. On the other hand, given the low efficiency of various economic, productive, and social sectors, attention to total factor productivity (TFP) is fundamental for global competitiveness. Given resource constraints in the economy, improving this factor can enhance investment, optimize resource allocation, prioritize productive sectors, reduce costs, improve product quality, and increase value added in economic sectors. Accordingly, the present study aims to investigate the impact of credit on total factor productivity and the growth of value added in Iran’s economic sectors using the Panel ARDL approach and quarterly time series data from 2012Q1 to 2024Q4 (Persian calendar). The results indicate that real credit, real exchange rates, and real capital formation in machinery have a positive and direct impact on the growth of value added and total factor productivity in economic sectors. Specifically, credit in the industrial sector and exchange rates in the service sector exert the greatest influence on TFP and the growth of value added. Additionally, capital formation in machinery in the agricultural sector has the most significant impact on total factor productivity.