Long Form Archives - Page 16 of 16 - Ajam Media Collective

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“The Iranian Schindler”: Abdol-Hossein Sardari’s Fight to Save the Iranian Jews of Occupied France

Written by guest author Elise K. Burton, a doctoral student in the History and Middle Eastern Studies Program at Harvard University who earned her PhD in 2017. A new, exciting book on Iranian…

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

Part III of a series on Afghan refugees in Iran. Earlier this year, I begun a series highlighting the experiences of Afghan refugees in Iran. By focusing on cultural production,…

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

Iran is a multi-ethnic country that is home to a diversity of languages, ethnic groups, and religions. So why do people think its a “Persian” country? The roots of this misconception lie in an ideology called Aryanism promoted by the Pahlavi Dynasty to homogenize the country.

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Kolahghermezi’s Enduring Popularity: Humor and Solidarity in Iranian TV Children’s Programming

A guest post on contemporary Iranian pop culture from Maryam Momeni. My first memory of children’s programming on IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) goes back to the early 1980s…

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Politics of the Iranian Box Office: Mocking the Morality Police and Green Movement Conspiracies

Posted on April 12, 2012January 17, 2017
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byAlex Shams

Over the last few decades, Iranian cinema has burst onto the global stage, earning worldwide acclaim and, most recently, a Golden Globe and an Oscar. No major film festival is…

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Welcome to Qom: City of Samosas and Mullah Factories

The first glimpses of Qom are always a let-down. The approach begins about an hour into the journey south on the Tehran-Qom road, when, after a long stretch of craggy…

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Persian Poetry in Los Angeles: Nostalgia vs. Adaptation

This essay is based on a talk presented at Stanford University on February 21, 2012 by Majid Naficy. Los Angeles is sometimes called Irangeles, because more than half a million…

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

Posted on February 29, 2012April 3, 2018
2 comments
byRustin Zarkar

Part II of a series on Afghan Refugees in Iran. Earlier this month, I completed a post discussing how works of literature from prominent Afghan writers voiced the conditions of…

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The Shahs of Sunset… and the Rest of Us: "Persian Money" in an Era of FBI Surveillance

Posted on February 8, 2012January 16, 2017
3 comments
byAlex Shams

After years of rumors and talk of a Persian version of the Jersey Shore, the nightmare is becoming reality this March when “the Shahs of Sunset” premiers on Bravo. The…

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