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Pamela Karimi is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. She received her PhD in history and theory of art and architecture from MIT in 2009. Her primary field of research is art, architecture, and visual culture of the modern Middle East.
A really good social analysis can take a seemingly minor issue and use it as a lens through which to examine multiple aspects of a complex system. Pamela Karimi has done exactly that in her impressively researched study of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran....this is a fascinating and wide-ranging study, exemplary in the breadth and depth of scholarship Karimi has brought to bear. It will be enormously valuable to anyone interested in issues of urbanization, gender roles, experiences of modernity and modernization, consumer culture and aesthetics, and Iranian social and material history. Karimi is one of the first scholars to consider the role of consumer culture in making the Iranian experience of modernity ... but this book will be [also] of interest to scholars outside Iran. -Norma Claire Moruzzi, Middle East Report (2015) Pamela Karimi's Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran is a thought-provoking examination of the intersection of domestic architecture, consumerism, and the social transformation of taste in twentieth-century Iran. -Talinn Grigor, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review (2014) Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran is an ambitious book. Mining a rich archive of architectural plans, leftist pamphlets, US Department of Education photos and documents, visual art, artists' catalogs, and much more, Karimi constructs a history of modern Iran from below or, better yet, from within. Within the intricate and dynamic interiors of Iranian homes, Karimi finds ever-shifting configurations of gender, class, intimacy, family, and citizenship, changes that modern secular and religious governments have certainly influenced but not determined. -Catherine Sameh, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2019) In this volume, just about everything that was circulating about the personal house in the public sphere is offered and addressed.... The author positions the reader in a complex, otherwise hard to access, visual world and identifies just how this is the place in which an important conversation is loudly taking place. -Carel Bertram, H-AMCA, H-Net Reviews (2015) The modern and contemporary history of Iran has been seen more from political and ideological perspectives. Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era is an insightful and brilliant response to the gap in scholarship. -Ehsan Lor Afshar, Journal of Design History (2014) Writing succinctly about the complexity of Iranian everyday life, Domesticity and Consumer Culture has been an enormous task, and is a key step towards understanding modern Iran. -Ali Pour Isa. Journal of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Middle East and Central Euroasia (2014) A really good social analysis can take a seemingly minor issue and use it as a lens through which to examine multiple aspects of a complex system. Pamela Karimi has done exactly that in her impressively researched study of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran....this is a fascinating and wide-ranging study, exemplary in the breadth and depth of scholarship Karimi has brought to bear. It will be enormously valuable to anyone interested in issues of urbanization, gender roles, experiences of modernity and modernization, consumer culture and aesthetics, and Iranian social and material history. Karimi is one of the first scholars to consider the role of consumer culture in making the Iranian experience of modernity ... but this book will be [also] of interest to scholars outside Iran. -Norma Claire Moruzzi, Middle East Report (2015) Pamela Karimi's Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran is a thought-provoking examination of the intersection of domestic architecture, consumerism, and the social transformation of taste in twentieth-century Iran. -Talinn Grigor, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review (2014) Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran is an ambitious book. Mining a rich archive of architectural plans, leftist pamphlets, US Department of Education photos and documents, visual art, artists' catalogs, and much more, Karimi constructs a history of modern Iran from below or, better yet, from within. Within the intricate and dynamic interiors of Iranian homes, Karimi finds ever-shifting configurations of gender, class, intimacy, family, and citizenship, changes that modern secular and religious governments have certainly influenced but not determined. -Catherine Sameh, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2019) In this volume, just about everything that was circulating about the personal house in the public sphere is offered and addressed.... The author positions the reader in a complex, otherwise hard to access, visual world and identifies just how this is the place in which an important conversation is loudly taking place. -Carel Bertram, H-AMCA, H-Net Reviews (2015) The modern and contemporary history of Iran has been seen more from political and ideological perspectives. Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era is an insightful and brilliant response to the gap in scholarship. -Ehsan Lor Afshar, Journal of Design History (2014) Writing succinctly about the complexity of Iranian everyday life, Domesticity and Consumer Culture has been an enormous task, and is a key step towards understanding modern Iran. -Ali Pour Isa. Journal of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Middle East and Central Euroasia (2014)
