Arab Literary Travels

Ruby Packenham-Behan: Introduction

For my final project, I will use my map to follow the journey of Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis simultaneously following the historical context. My project will follow the journey of Marji as she witnesses her way of life in Tehran drastically change, her experience of becoming a woman in the Islamic state and follows her migrating to Europe. Her story is accompanied by significant historical events and ideologies, such as the Iran-Iraq war, the relationship Islam has with communism and ultimately the ideas of Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism. Although this seems like a complex task all issues feed in Marji’s life and I want to further examine how these historical events and ideologies within the context of Marji’s story.

After presenting my initial ideas of my project I took into consideration comments made by my peers. Firstly I received positive feedback on mapping not only Marji's story but also mapping the ideologies that exist within the graphic novel, thus, I wanted to develop this even further by changing the format of my map allowing me more creative freedom. The new format of my map has allowed me to explore these ideas further, first explaining the ideology, its relevance to Iran and finally its relevance to Marji's story. Another comment I received was the potential to explore Marji's sex and sexuality as a female in the changing Iranian nation, especially in terms of the introduction to mandatory veil wearing. My Persepolis map now has a section dedicated to sexuality in Iran in the post-Revolution years and discusses this within Marji's experiences. 

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