Crown Center for Middle East Studies

Prisons, Politics, and Public Life in Modern Iran

A Brown Bag Seminar with Golnar Nikpour

March 7, 2018

Men working at a table in prison

This talk traces the history of the prison in modern Iran. Examining the expansion and centralization of the Iranian penal and criminal codes in the Pahlavi era (1925-1979), Golnar Nikpour argues that the Iranian prison system becomes a public space for questions of ethics, rights, citizenship, and political belonging and un-belonging. Nikpour will also explore the historical interplay between the concrete space of the Iranian prison and the role of prisons in producing new public cultures and political languages in the 20th and now into the 21st century.

Golnar Nikpour is the Neubauer Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center.