Ronen A. Cohen is assistant professor and chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science at Ariel University in Israel. He has published numerous books including: The Upheavals in the Middle East: The Theory and Practice of a Revolution (Lexington Books, 2014) and The Hojjatiyeh Society in Iran: Ideology and Practice from the 1950s to the Present.

This collection of articles aims at the complicated character of the Iranian identity and provides interesting case studies for it. Lucid in both arguments and expositions this volume will be essential reading for anyone engaged in the study of Iran.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction, Ronen A. CohenSection One: Historical and Current Perspectives on Persian, Islamic, and Contested Religious IdentitiesChapter One: The Unending Battle between the Persian and Islamic Identities of Iran, Harold RhodeChapter Two: National Identity or Political Legitimacy: The Reconstruction of the City of Bam, Ladan ZarabadiSection Two: An Islamic-National Identity and Nuclear ProgramChapter Three: The Islamic Identity Project: Between Coercion and Voluntarism, Ofira SeliktarChapter Four: Iran’s National Identity and the Nuclear Program: A Rational Choice Theory Analysis, Farhad RezaeiChapter Five: Overcoming “the –isms”: Iranian’s Role in the Modern World, from the Perspective of Mahmud Ahmadi-nezhad, Moshe-hay S. HagigatSection Three: Sexuality, Beauty, and Social Networking—Between the Private, Self, and the Public SphereChapter Six: The Identity Designers of the Self in Sexuality, Beauty, and Plastic Surgery in Iran, Ronen A. CohenChapter Seven: Iranians against the “Other”: Iranian Identity in the Social Media Era, Raz ZimmtConclusionsBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex