Rethinking History: Returning to Archives and Documents: Slavery in Eastern Iranian Regions: The Case of Late Antique Bactria


Forugh Farrokhzad, Modernity and Madness

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Dr. Leila Rahimi Bahmany is a research fellow and lecturer of the Persian language at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Iranian women’s literature and feminist literary theories are her main fields of research. She has authored several book chapters and encyclopedia articles on Persian literature. Her book, Mirrors of Entrapment and Emancipation: Forugh Farrokhzad […]

Rakhshan Banietemad’s Social Realism

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Maryam Ghorbankarimi is a lecturer in film practice at Lancaster University. She completed her Ph.D. in film studies at the University of Edinburgh in 2012 and her dissertation was published as a book entitled A Colourful Presence; The Evolution of Women’s Representation in Iranian Cinema (Cambridge Scholar 2015). Her edited volume ReFocus: The Works of […]

Shame, Stigma and Sin: From Tahirih, to Forugh, to Us

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Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-bon poet, playwright and librettist. About her poems, the Poetry Foundation writes, “Wolpé’s concise, unflinching, and often wry free verse explores violence, culture, and gender.” Named a “2020-2021 Cultural Trailblazer” by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Wolpéis the recipient of the 2014 PEN/Heim, 2013 Midwest Book Award, […]

Precarity and Possibility: The Labor of Underground Video Dealers in Iran

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Blake Atwood is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at the American University of Beirut, where he also serves as the Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies. He has published widely on media in Iran and Lebanon. He is the author of Reform Cinema in Iran: Film and Political Change in […]

Sonia Balassanian: Writing the lmpossible

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Claudia Yaghoobi is a Roshan Institute Associate Professor in Persian Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Iranian Literature and Film (Cambridge UP, 2020) and Subjectivity in ‘Attar, Persian Sufism, and European Mysticism (Purdue UP, 2017). Focusing on […]

Pioneer Female Directors, Writers and Producers in Iranian Cinema

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Khatereh Sheibani is a researcher of Iranian cinema and Persian literature. She has established Persian studies at York University, Canada, where she is currently teaching courses on Persian literature and culture, Iranian cinema, and Middle Eastern cinemas. Khatereh completed her doctorate degree in Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada in […]

Women Depicting Freedom of Movement in Iranian Cinema

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Professor Nacim Pak-Shiraz is Personal Chair in Cinema and Iran, and Head of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She has published in the fields of visual cultures, constructions of masculinity, and the engagement of religion and film. She has authored Shi’i Islam in Iranian Cinema: Religion and […]

Women Poets: Gendered Personhood and Displacement

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Dr. Fatemeh Shams is a specialist in Persian literature. She earned her Ph.D in Oriental Studies from University of Oxford, Wadham College. Before joining Penn, she taught Persian language and literature in various academic institutions including University of Oxford, University of SOAS and Courtauld Institute of Art in the United Kingdom.

From Golden City to Felestin: The Onomastics of Cinema Halls in Tehran

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Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Allameh Tabatabaee University in Tehran (2003), and is currently an associate professor in the Department of Performing Arts, University of Tehran. He has published extensively in the areas of Iranian dramatic literature and the discourse analysis of drama. https://youtu.be/WV3YHy57UdA

Anthologies of Persian(ate) Poetry by Women

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Sunil Sharma is a professor of Persianate and comparative literature at Boston University. His areas of expertise are Persian and South Asian literatures, and his research interests include poetry and court cultures, the history of the book, and travel writing. His latest book, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Poetry in an Indian Court (Harvard University Press, 2017), […]

Iranian Cinema and International Film Festivals: A Crossroads between Arts and Politics

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The York Centre for Asian Research, the Department of History, and the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics host The Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Lecture Series: Iranian Cinema. Amir Ganjavi, a PhD in communication and culture, is a Toronto-based writer, cultural critic, festival director, community activist, and filmmaker. https://youtu.be/eK_4EtuT4mo

Context and Concept: Early 20th century Women Poets

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Rivanne Sandler is Professor Emerita at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Toronto. She is a specialist of early-20th century Iranian women’s poetry. In their vision of a revitalization of the Persian nation modeled on the flourishing countries of Europe, 19th and early 20th c. century intellectuals factored in a female […]