[PAST EVENT] The Unfolding of the Self/Friend in Early Modern Isfahan

October 25, 2013
3pm
Location
Chancellors Hall (formerly Tyler Hall), Room 102
300 James Blair Dr
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location
"One of the most challenging questions framing histories of friendship is how properly to historicize the different valences of intimacy that bound together friends living in previous centuries. In the spirit of John Boswell I will talk about mostly male friendships in seventeenth-century Iran.

Like same-sex unions in premodern Europe, sworn friendship in Iran was a form of voluntary kinship a bond with religious overtones that served the social needs of advancement in politics and commerce through the broadening of the family network. As such, they rivaled and competed with matrimony and blood kinship."