Postdoctoral Fellows

zahra-khosroshahi

Khosroshahi, Zahra

University of Toronto
Phone Number
Email Address

z.khosroshahi@utoronto.ca

Website
Website

Zahra Khosroshahi is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. She completed her doctorate at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, working on prominent Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad’s cinema as a gateway into important discussions around gender, femininity, and the taboo. Her research explores how film challenges systems of power, and how filmmaking specifically functions as a form of resistance in Iran.

Khosroshahi’s publications have appeared in a number of leading journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Frames Cinema Journal, and Feminist Media Histories. She is currently working on her forthcoming monograph “Iranian Women Filmmakers: A Cinema of Resistance” (Edinburgh University Press). In addition to her scholarship, she is dedicated to disseminating her research outside of academia. Her work has been well received by the public, and recognized through the Public and Outreach prize in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the University of East Anglia Engagement Awards.

University of Toronto

,
Supervisor:
Sara Saljoughi


My post-doctoral research at the University of Toronto with the support of the SSHRC, under the supervision of Dr Sara Saljoughi investigates the work of Iranian filmmakers, as they persist, resist and fight against systems of power both at home and abroad. This research aims to highlight the importance of cinema as a platform for social and political change in the country. I argue that in a media landscape restricted by the red lines of censorship, artistic expression functions as a form of cultural and political resistance. In this pursuit, for my methodology, I employ a triangulation of ethnographic work paired with reading film-as-text and the application of theory, along with a deep contextual, cultural and linguistic understanding of Iran’s complexities.