The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran

Thursday April 18th, 12:00 - 2 PM
Room 420, Hamilton Hall (1130 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027)

Join us for a book talk with Beeta Baghoolizadeh (Princeton University) on her recently published book, The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran (Duke University Press, March 2024). In The Color Black, Beeta Baghoolizadeh traces the twin processes of enslavement and erasure of Black people in Iran during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She illustrates how geopolitical changes and technological advancements in the nineteenth century made enslaved East Africans uniquely visible in their servitude in wealthy and elite Iranian households. During this time, Blackness, Africanness, and enslavement became intertwined—and interchangeable—in Iranian imaginations. After the end of slavery in 1929, the implementation of abolition involved an active process of erasure on a national scale, such that a collective amnesia regarding slavery and racism persists today.