In this conversation with Manijeh Nasrabadi, we will be discussing the current uprising in Iran.
Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old Kurdish Iranian woman, was killed on 16 September after being arrested for not wearing the mandatory hijab properly. Although many women have been arrested, tortured and killed by the Iranian authorities over the past years, Mahsa Amini’s death sparked nation-wide protests in more than 40 cities. Women and men from different ethnic backgrounds and social classes have come together to not only protest against her death, and the underlying mandatory hijab policy, but they are challenging the very foundation of the Islamic republic. We aim to go beyond the headlines to shed light on the meaning and potential for these protests.
The event is jointly co-hosted by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University as well as the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.
Manijeh Nasrabadi is assistant professor of women's, gender and sexuality studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States, is forthcoming from Duke University Press in October 2022. Her essays and articles have appeared in or are forthcoming in American Quarterly, Journal of Asian American Sutdies, Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties, Scholar & Feminist Online, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Comparative Studies of South Asian, Africa, and the Middle East, Social Text online, jadaliyya.com, tehranbureau.com, Bi Taarof, and Callaloo. She is a member of Jadaliyya’s Iran Page editorial board and a founding member of Raha Iranian Feminist Collective.
Moderators:
Nadje Al-Ali, Director, Middle East Studies, Robert Family Professor of International Studies, and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies, Brown University.
Kathryn Spellman Poots, Visiting Research Scholar, Middle East Institute, Columbia University, and Associate Professor, Aga Khan University.