مطالب

This paper aims to explore the relationship between epic poetry and national self-consciousness and in particular study how Shahnameh may be analyzed from this angle. What is the relationship between the Shahnameh and the Iranian national self-consciousness? What can one say about the Iranian national self-consciousness on the basis of this text? What does the text reveal about the Iranian identity? A related question should also be answered, is the Shahnameh an epic? This is not a pedantic question concerned merely with definitions and labels. As will become clear, an epic reveals a great deal about the national consciousness of the people to whom it belongs (or who belong to it); to identify a poem as an epic, is to be making an important statement about the national consciousness of a people. The question of whether the Shahnameh is an epic or not is hence far from a pedantic one. It takes us right into the heart of Iranian national consciousness

Political Cinema is defined as a "political event", a "biography", or "process". Such a definition is, however, not inclusive enough to cover the films which focus on the normative aspects of politics without necessarily narrating a special political issue. By reviewing Abbas Kiarostami’s films, this article attempts to revise the definition of political cinema and propose the notion of normative political cinema .

Of the various literary works, which have come to exist during the centuries and civilizations, few are capable of remaining in the universal history of literature and culture. Also among these few, only finger trip has become immortal on the people's mind and memory. One might conclude that having joint humanistic concerns is a cause for the immortality of any work of art or literature. The more a literary work deals with commons, questions, subjectivities and human pains, more people will find their own feelings and "their heart word" in it. Undoubtedly, "Saadi’s Golestan" can be considered one of such works. The present study reconsiders Saadi’s Golestan in terms of anxieties and concerns that contemporary human beings are encountered with. Since Saadi’s strategies and techniques are based on his humanitarian experiences, wisdom and high qualities of genius, intellect and attention to readers, in many situations, it appears to be a solution for the contemporary human problems, and this is the secret to the Golestan’s durability. The research, using descriptive–analytic method and through an inter-textual and induction approach, tries to explain Saadi's humanitarian views and his strategies and techniques to respond to the contemporary human pains and challenges. According to the outcomes of the research, a great part of Saadi's sayings in Golestan is based on his humanistic views and his solutions to the social and spiritual (existential) anxieties and crises. Therefore, his teachings, surpassing the place and time, often can be a healing to the contemporary human's sufferings and a solution for his ongoing challenges.

In this paper, we will review the foreign exchange market and will try to extract an exchange market pressure and an intervention index for Iran by following the Weymark (1995) approach to evaluate the Central Bank of Iran’s exchange rate policy during 1368:Q1 to 1391:Q3. The estimation method employed, is the econometric technique known in the literature as the Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS).The exchange market pressure’s mean value of 0.062 provides evidence that depreciating pressure remained dominant over the entire sample period. Also, the mean value of the intervention index is 0.44, indicating that the foreign exchange reserve and exchange rate changes absorbed forty-four and fifty-six percent of the pressure, respectively. Otherwise the results of the paper show that on an average there was a downward pressure on Iran’s currency and the Central Bank of Iran pursued an active intervention policy. Specifically, as the intervention index shows, the Central Bank of Iran used both exchange rate and foreign exchange reserve interventions for restoring the foreign exchange market to equilibrium levels, a policy known as the managed float exchange rate regime.