Republics of Myth: National Narratives and the US-Iran Conflict

Registration for the Zoom webinar is required to join the session.

Conventional accounts of US-Iran relations focus mainly on the geostrategic and ideological sources of tension and enmity between the two countries. Republics of Myth illuminates a much-neglected, yet no less potent, factor shaping US-Iran relations: national narratives. Through in-depth interviews, oral histories, and critical dialogues with Iranian and American policymakers, journalists, and academics, the authors provide new perspectives on the frameworks shaping decision-making, policy discussions, and missed opportunities in US-Iran relations since 1979.

Hussein Banai is an Associate Professor of International Studies in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies at MIT. He is the author of Hidden Liberalism: Burdened Visions of Progress in Modern Iran, and co-author of two volumes on US-Iran relations. He earned his PhD in Political Science from Brown University.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partner (the George Washington University History Department) for their continued support.