Book Launch:"Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison" with Perin Gürel
Celebrate the book launch of Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison: America's Wife, America's Concubine (Cambridge University Press, 2025) with the author, Liu Institute Faculty Fellow Perin E. Gürel.
Sponsored by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and cosponsored by the Liu Institute's Southwest Asia and North Africa Working Group (SWANA).
About the Book
In a 1962 meeting at the White House, Iran's last monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, complained to US President John F. Kennedy 'America treats Turkey as a wife, and Iran as a concubine.' Taking this protest as a critical starting point, this book examines the transnational history of comparisons between Türkiye and Iran from Cold War-era modernization theory to post-9/11 studies of 'moderate Islam'. Perin E. Gürel explores how US policymakers and thought leaders strategically used comparisons to advance shifting agendas, while stakeholders in Türkiye and Iran responded by anticipating, manipulating, and reshaping US-driven narratives. Juxtaposing dominant US-based comparisons with representations originating from Iran and Türkiye, Gürel's interdisciplinary and multilingual research uncovers unexpected twists: comparisons didn't always reinforce US authority but often reflected and encouraged the rise of new ideologies. This book offers fresh insight into the complexities of US-Middle Eastern relations and the enduring impact of comparativism on international relations.
About the Author
Perin E. Gürel is associate professor of American Studies and concurrent associate professor of Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Gürel earned her Ph.D. in American Studies and a graduate qualification in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Yale University in 2011. Her research and teaching explore the United States in the world and the world in the United States through transnational feminist lenses, with a special focus on U.S.-Middle East relations after World War I.
Professor Gürel has held fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Institute of Turkish Studies, the Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Advisory Network for the Yale Initiative for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion. She is also a Faculty Fellow for the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion, the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame.
Originally published at asia.nd.edu.