Cosmopolitanism of Modernist Architects in Reza Shah's Iran

Talinn Grigor, visiting fellow at Princeton University's Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies and professor and chair of the Art History Program at the University of California-Davis, gave this talk at Princeton in February 2019. In the talk, Grigor proposes that Reza Shah’s push for modernization in Iran created an inadvertent affirmative action nation, from within which professional architects from the margins of a minority — and as pioneers of modernity and cosmopolitanism — rose to the challenges of building the secular nation. Presented as part of the 2018-19 Mossavar-Rahmani Center Seminar Series.