This article troubles the longstanding rhyme between nineteenth-century Paris, flânerie, and modernity. It constructs a wider genealogy of flânerie in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, beginning with two figures who sauntered through the streets of Tehran: the fokoli and the farangimaab. By foregrounding the literal and f…[Read more]

This essay proposes the theory of multiple simultaneous temporalities as a constitutive feature of global modernism. It spotlights varieties of heterogeneous time—outside but alongside the homogeneous empty time of clocks and calendars—in modernist literature. These overlapping temporalities replace the linear succession of past, present, and fut…[Read more]

In moments of cinematic ekphrasis, a painting, often a portrait, allegorizes the experience of uneven development. During the ekphrastic moment, the painting—ostensibly the spatial art par excellence—introduces multiple temporalities into the film. Some of these heterogeneous temporalities are surreal and reversible, while others are non…[Read more]