Issue 9 (2023): Book History in the Persianate World from the Samanid Dynasty to the Present Day

Editors’ Note

Guest editor: Esmail Yazdanpour

Esmail Yazdanpour is the guest editor of this issue of Lingua Franca, devoted to Persian-language book history scholarship on the Persianate world. A graduate of the universities of Kerman and Shiraz, Esmail is a Tehran-based independent researcher, writer and translator. An academic career at Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and Institute for Social and Cultural Studies, studying knowledge production and dissemination in education settings, convinced him that reading is, in his own words, “the most radical social activity”. He left academia to become a reading advocate, working in a bookstore to foster intellectual dialogue and community. He regularly travels around Iran to talk to local reading activists and facilitators in his role as a social reading activist who sees books as a tool to promote knowledge sharing, rhizomatic cultural exchange, and dialogic learning. He also translated the articles for this issue.

The editorial team would like to thank him for his enthusiastic and thorough editorial work.

Cynthia Gabbay
Susan Pickford
Mariana Silveira

Contents:

Editors’ Note