The birth of a modern nation

This article explores gender norms developed by French Orientalists and Iranian modernists in the nineteenth century by analyzing their scientific and literary productions and their social and intellectual trajectories. The first part focuses on the production of knowledge about Iran in the nineteenth century. It reveals how French Orientalists caused the Iranian elites to become obscured in their production of Orientalist knowledge. It also analyzes the process of the orientalization of gender though the trope of the harem. A second part shows how the modernization of Iran was structured by gender norms that targeted women in particular and led to the creation of a heteronationalism at the end of the nineteenth century.