ajammc's blog

Taking Back the Streets: Iranian Graffiti Artists Negotiating Public Space

ajammc — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:26:40 +0000

On the eve of Iran’s 1979 Revolution, the Iranian public sphere was transformed into places where information could be exchanged verbally, textually, and visually. The walls came alive with opinions and the chants of the masses. After revolutionary forces under Ayatollah Khomeini triumphed and became institutionalized, these same walls became the space for the dissemination of new revolutionary values. This co-optation, however, meant silencing other views from finding space on the walls.

The Bridge to New Julfa: A Historical Look at the Armenian-Iranian Community of Isfahan

ajammc — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 01:59:13 +0000

It’s January 6th. Yet another snowy winter afternoon in Isfahan, but somehow curiously unlike the rest. A blanket of white fluff cloaks the medieval metropolis and all of its timeless splendor, shielding the antique avenues, turquoise-dome rooftops, cypress tree colonnades, and magnificent bridge arcades from the yearning eyes of even the most impassioned beholder. The puffy white shrouds gather to form a crown atop the Zagros mountains in the distance, setting the scene of a glorious winter wonderland.

On the Sanctions Against Iran: Reflections from a Child of the Iran-Iraq War

ajammc — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 04:14:17 +0000

There is a history that echoes and scratches within my blood. It tells stories of the suffering of my mother, my father, my sisters, my uncles, aunts and their grandparents. It is a story of suffering, sacrifices, resilience and solidarity. Often, I am fooled by the smiles of their tellers. However, never forget, behind the hospitality and honesty of my mother’s smile lay wounds that will forever haunt the corridors of all of our histories. They are wounds caused by the brutalities of war, the deaths exalted and the innocences lost.

A Young Diaspora Raises its Voice: Creating Iranian Alliances Across Borders

ajammc — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:47:19 +0000

In 2002, a group of Iranian-American students studying abroad made a wild and exaggerated observation: Iranians are everywhere.

How Good Is Arash’s Persian?

ajammc — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:55:21 +0000

Like the modern music of most cultures, a survey of the modern Iranian pop scene would produce a pretty standard variety of artists and genres. The Iranian music video (“Clip”) shows that broadcast on international satellite networks feature artists performing different styles of music that are found all over the globe: pop, electronic, hip-hop, and rock among others.

No, Iran Didn’t Just Ban Women From Universities.

ajammc — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:08:36 +0000

I awoke yesterday morning to a barrage of excited, fearful, and shocked emails and messages demanding to understand why Iran had suddenly decided to ban women from entering university.

Misreading Feminism & Women’s Rights in Tehran

ajammc — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 11:42:01 +0000

It is nearly impossible to read any article about Iranian women and not spend the entire time rolling your eyes. Historically, the Western media has tended to make liberal use of Orientalist and infantilizing depictions of Iranian women as, alternatively, trapped in the harems of their turbaned overseers (a historically pre-1979 trope applied liberally to all Middle Eastern women) or militantly crazed and clad in black “traditional garb” (a post-1979 trope specific to Iranian, and later Islamist, women).

The Afro-Iranian Community: Beyond Haji Firuz Blackface, the Slave Trade, & Bandari Music

ajammc — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:57:17 +0000

A friend recently shared two anecdotes from his trip to Iran with me that deal with race and skin color in the Iranian context. In Persepolis, which is located in southern Iran, darker features are more prevalent than in northern Iran. During a trip to the city, he and his Tehrani friends were surrounded by local schoolchildren yelling “hello!” and other basic English phrases. Even the teacher leading the group spoke to my friend in stilted English, asking where the group was from.

“The Iranian Schindler”

ajammc — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:46:11 +0000

A new, exciting book on Iranian Jewry is making lower-tier headlines in Israel, the UK, France and even Turkey.

Afghans in Iran: Contradictory State Policies and a Grassroots Anti-Racist Movement

ajammc — Thu, 31 May 2012 19:28:13 +0000

Earlier this year, I begun a series highlighting the experiences of Afghan refugees in Iran. By focusing on cultural production, particularly film and literature, I wished to elucidate the conditions of 2-3 million individuals making a living away from their war-torn homeland as well as to explore the various narratives produced by their migration.

A “Persian” Iran?: Challenging the Aryan Myth and Persian Ethnocentrism

ajammc — Sat, 19 May 2012 16:54:01 +0000

I am often confronted by the question “Are you Iranian or Persian, and what’s the difference?” and it has become something of a bonding ritual among Iranians I know to discuss the various ways in which we answer that question. For many years, I answered that there existed little difference between the two besides a political connotation, “Persian” being the adjective of choice for those who avoided any connection to the Islamic Republic.

Kolahghermezi’s Enduring Popularity: Humor & Solidarity in State TV Children’s Programming

ajammc — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:56:18 +0000

My first memory of children’s programming on IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) goes back to the early 1980s when I myself was a little girl. During the Iran-Iraq war years that lasted almost a decade we, “the children of wartime” as they would come to call us, were discovering the world around us in a country where serious matters of life and death, revolution and war, and other aspects of socio-political turmoil had surrounded the innocent world of our childhoods.

Persian Gulf Cosmopolitans & Emirati Fences: The Life and Times of the Iranian Souk

ajammc — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 01:56:44 +0000

As the standoff between Iran and the United States enters into a new, more aggressive phase of crippling sanctions punctuated by threats of war, the Arab oil sheikhdoms to Iran’s south have increasingly collaborated with US efforts to isolate Tehran. Increasingly, the Persian Gulf has been represented as a geopolitical powder keg with distinct cultural and ideological divisions separating the northern and the southern shores. This strategic body of water, which serves a locus for the global energy trade, has been politicized and militarized by the littoral states and by a U.S.

Overland from Yerevan to Kabul: A wedding and a funeral in Iran’s Caspian foothills

ajammc — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 01:00:10 +0000

June, 2011. I had spent the last week in the tropical moisture of Rasht,
Iran. My hosts were Reza and his family. Reza, an Iranian, had just graduated from university in Armenia, where I had met him, and his
father is a political science professor at the University of Rasht.
Although I had developed a friendly and comfortable relationship with my
hosts, it was time to move on. They had already welcomed me, a total

Far From Home: Portrayals of the Afghan Refugee in Iranian Cinema

ajammc — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:23:27 +0000

Earlier this month, I completed a post discussing how works of literature from prominent Afghan writers voiced the conditions of millions of undocumented Afghan refugees residing in Iran. These members of the Afghan diaspora have been able to draw upon their own personal accounts as refugees to create narratives describing the struggles of every day life within their displaced communities in realistic and compelling ways.

Literature from the Afghan Diaspora: Refugees in Iran

ajammc — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:37:40 +0000

Iran is a culturally heterogeneous society that has been shaped by waves of migration over many centuries. While much of the domestic political and academic rhetoric chooses to highlight Iran’s resistance to foreign influence, the invaluable contributions of migrant communities have often been ignored or re-appropriated. Migrations from neighboring countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq have not only fostered an environment of socio-economic and intellectual exchange, but are crucial in dispelling the myth of Iran as homogeneous nation-state with impenetrable borders.

Lifting the Pardeh on Revolutionary Poster Art

ajammc — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:24:06 +0000