Iran's Women, Life, Freedom Movement: One Year Later
The Crown Center for Middle East Studies invites you to our annual kickoff event in conjunction with the exhibition Arghavan Khosravi: Black Rain at the Rose Art Museum
Thursday, September 14, 2023
Watch the recording of the event on our YouTube channel.
On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, died in police custody in Iran after being arrested for "improper" veiling. Her death set off unprecedented protests nationwide, with demonstrators adopting the Kurdish slogan "Women, Life, Freedom.” The ensuing months led to the arrest and detainment of tens of thousands of protestors and several executions. These protests sparked speculation that Iran was on the verge of another revolution. On the one year anniversary of Amini's death and the movement it ignited, the Crown Center and the Rose Art Museum are co-hosting an in-person and online discussion with professors Mohammad Ali Kadivar, Arang Keshavarzian, and Nazanin Shahrokni, moderated by Naghmeh Sohrabi, on where the movement is today along with its short and long term political, cultural, and economic impact.
Panelists:
Mohammad Ali Kadivar is an assistant professor of sociology and international studies at Boston College. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and earned a MA and BA in political science from University of Tehran in Iran. From 2016 to 2018, Kadivar was a postdoctoral fellow at Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Kadivar's first book Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy was published in November 2022 with Princeton University Press.
Arang Keshavarzian is an associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He is the author of Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace and co-editor, with Ali Mirsepassi, of Global 1979: Geographies and Histories of the Iranian Revolution (Cambridge, 2021). His forthcoming book Making Space for the Gulf: Histories of Regionalism and the Middle East will be published by Stanford University Press in Spring 2024.
Nazanin Shahrokni is an associate professor of international studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She is the author of Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press 2020). Nazanin currently serves on the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association and on the Council of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies.
Moderator: Naghmeh Sohrabi is the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History and director for research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University.
Opening remarks: Gary Samore is the Crown Family Director and Professor of the Practice of Politics at Brandeis University.
The Rose Art Museum was exhibiting Arghavan Khosravi: Black Rain, the Iranian artist’s first comprehensive museum survey, and whose most recent work is directly inspired by the Women, Life, Freedom movement.