November 9, 2009

A Defender of the Liberal Arts Contemplates Their Changing Role

A Defender of the Liberal Arts Contemplates Their Changing Role 1

Thos Robinson, Getty Images

Writer Azar Nafisi is working on a book that defends the liberal arts.

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Thos Robinson, Getty Images

Writer Azar Nafisi is working on a book that defends the liberal arts.

By David Glenn

Santa Fe, N.M.

For more than five years, Azar Nafisi has been working sporadically on a book called "The Republic of the Imagination," which she describes as a treatise in defense of the liberal arts. The book, which isn't expected until at least 2012, will explore some of the ideas about culture and democracy that were implicit in her best-selling 2003 memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran.

On Monday, Ms. Nafisi, who is a visiting fellow at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of

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