Iranian Diaspora Studies Seminar: Diasporic Pilgrimage

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies
in collaboration with the
Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies, San Francisco State University and the
Iranian & Persian Gulf Studies Program, Oklahoma State University
 jointly present:

Diasporic Pilgrimage: Iranian Women’s Return Narratives

Niyosha Keyzad, University of Toronto
 
Monday, 21 April 2025, 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time (Canada and US) 
 
Zoom Meeting Registration:
https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/FaMX69B1S36-HPIpMiPUAw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Abstract:

Pilgrimages are sacred, particularly in the view of Iran’s theocratic regime. However, in diasporic Iranian women’s writing, commonly acknowledged sacred sites are ironically and defiantly secularized by the narrators, who imagine other spaces, on which they project personal significance, as transcendent. Diasporic return to Iran has changed over the past two decades. While earlier return narratives associate the journey with complex childhood memory, often marked by nostalgia and trauma, more recent works reflect a Romantic vision of return, focused on sexuality, nature, and mystery. In this talk, I examine post-Revolution diasporic Iranian women’s return narratives through the paradigm of pilgrimage, which I see as a defining feature of life writing that portrays homecoming as a transformative experience for the returnee. Recently, scholars have rejected discussions of these narratives as a monolithic genre of confessional “misery memoirs” produced in the West about oppression in the East and instead highlight their generative features. Adding to this discourse, I argue that return becomes a rite of passage to a place that is central to identification, but that is ultimately a Promised Land deferred and a point of departure, rather than a final destination.

Bio:

Niyosha Keyzad holds a PhD in English and Diaspora and Transnational Studies from the University of Toronto and an MA in English from McGill University. Her dissertation, “Diasporic Pilgrimage: Iranian Women’s Return Narratives, 1999-2020,” examined post-Revolution return writing through the lens of pilgrimage, focusing on how these narratives redefine diasporic return as a transformative experience for the returnee. Niyosha is a Research Associate at the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies and currently teaches critical writing at the University of Toronto Scarborough.