Ajam Media Collective
Iran
“This Place Should Have Been Iran”: Iranian Imaginings in/of Dubai
It is precisely the position between an Iran back home and an Iran abroad, or Iran’s present circumstances and possible future, which informs the sense of displacement so widely shared among Iranian expatriates here. For many Iranians, Dubai’s emergence as a global metropolis is imagined to have resulted, more specifically, from the displacement of Iranian modernity. Continue reading
Queer and Trans Subjects in Iranian Cinema: Between Representation, Agency, and Orientalist Fantasies
Historically, some Europeans have fantasized about the closed-door sexual lives of Middle Easterners, especially homosocial spaces and same-sex relations. The movie Circumstance has received relatively positive public reception in the West due to this conformity to Western Orientalist imaginaries; Facing Mirrors challenges the hegemonic and Orientalizing narrative of Iran’s sexual and gender minorities, and is thus ignored from the cultural public domain. Continue reading
The Poster Arts of May Day: International Worker’s Day in Revolutionary Iran
During the Iranian Revolution, International Worker’s Day became an ideological battleground as competing political organizations— secular and religious— organized their constituents and articulated their interpretation of worker’s solidarity. Visual ephemera related to May Day, such as posters, are testaments to the pluralistic nature of the early years of the Revolution. By looking at various posters disseminated by organizations of the time, one can see how various political factions used similar visual motifs and iconography. Continue reading
Re-imagining Eurasia with Slavs and Tatars: Critical Practices of Geography and Museum Exhibition
Slavs and Tatars’ work introduces audiences to cultural exchanges between seemingly unlikely places, reminding us of the interconnected nature of culture and highlighting histories obscured by the rigid workings of modern geopolitics. In a world full of heavy-handed visual depictions of political and social issues that rely on simplistic, reductionist constructions of culture, Slavs and Tatars offers work rooted in a nuance and more subtle understanding of history. Continue reading
A Nowruz Dedicated to the Iraqi People, 10 Years Later
Iranian-American reflections on the meaning of Nowruz, 10 years after the invasion of Iraq. May we all be inspired this year again by the rebirth and resilience of nature and of love that Nowruz signifies, and may we be reminded of the need to live freely, honorably, and bravely as the ongoing Iraqi struggle for liberation inspires us to do. Continue reading
Pahlavi Iran and Zionism: An Intellectual Elite’s Short-Lived Love Affair with the State of Israel
The relationship between Israel and Iran dates back to the early years of the State of Israel. Insofar as Pahlavi Iran is concerned, even oppositional circles in the 1960s and 1970s had a complex and sometimes favorable approach to the State of Israel, including prominent thinkers like Jalal Al-e Ahmad, the author of “Westoxification.” This perception would change definitively for the negative after the 1967 war. Continue reading
Do you Ajam? Call for Editors
Ajam is looking to add Regional Editors to our team, with the intention of broadening our coverage and improving our analysis across the region. Applications due March 3, 2013! Continue reading
Music and Race Politics in the Iranian Persian Gulf: Shanbehzadeh and “Bandari”
A guest post by Kamyar Jarahzadeh, a student at UC Berkeley focusing on migration and forced migration in Turkey and the Middle East. Read his earlier post on Iranian pop music. Persian art music is a major part of the Iranian musical tradition, but, often times, it seems to be the only musical tradition in the … Continue reading
Crafts as Citizen Diplomacy: Slavs and Tatars on Revolutionary Media in Iran and Poland
Far from the tacit dismissal of handicrafts and folklore that has often characterised the modern project, Slavs and Tatars tend to see no less than the currents of history, political emancipation, and ideology in these otherwise discreet craft objects and practices. Some of these traditions – such as the mirror-mosaic – have been instrumentalized for ideological ends. Continue reading
Seeing Through the Haze: the Politics of Reporting Sanctions and Smog in Tehran
This winter has been a particularly rough one in Tehran. For the third year in a row, air pollution has frequently reached highly unhealthy levels, and schools and other public institutions have closed for days at a time in response. Although Tehran’s air quality has been a major issue for decades, never in recent memory … Continue reading
