Genres Without Borders

Literary cultures are inherently mobile, at times transgressing and disregarding, and at others reconstituting, cultural and national boundaries. Genres and literary forms, too, are vehicles for the mobility of ideas that strike chords in cultures and locales far from their origins. In Genres Without Borders, Marie Ostby examines modern and contemporary Iranian literature and the hybrid genres and innovative constructions it has taken to reveal how these tensile modes move and shift across transnational space. Ostby argues that, despite censorship and political isolation, Iranian literature has thrived across borders through strategic transformations in genre and form that emerged in response to these very constraints. Drawing on travelogues, graphic narrative, and social media, alongside more traditional literary forms, such as the ghazal form, she traces the cross-border circulation that makes Persianate culture legible to global audiences while maintaining a distinctive voice. For the globally oriented Iranian writing she examines, the crossing of cultural boundaries is both mirrored and embodied in the crossing of genre boundaries, connecting these texts to a world literary culture despite accelerating political attempts to isolate them.