Second
Annual Conference on the Iranian Diaspora
Sponsored by the
Center for Persian Studies and Hosted by the Iranian Students’ Foundation
Day 1:
Saturday, April 23, 2005
* Art exhibition by: (TBA)
8:30 - 9:20 Registration and Breakfast
9:30
- 10:00
Opening Remarks
Narges Bajoghli,
Nikoo Paydar (IAAB), Saman Behbehani (ISF). Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak,
Director of the Center for Persian Studies, University of Maryland
10:00 - 11:40
-
Panel 1
-
Expressing
our Immigrant Experiences: Writing Ourselves into History
Moderator:
Sogole Moin, Wellesley College
Taraneh Hemami, artist
Hall of ReflectionsDr. Persis Karim, San Jose State University
Writing Ourselves into History: Literature and the Construction of Iranian-American IdentityRoya Hakakian, writer
Journey from the Land of NoTara Bahrampour, writer
To See and See AgainNiloufar Talebi, The Translation Project
Translating the 21st Century Iranian
11:50 - 12:50
Lunch
1:00 - 2:20
-
Panel 2
-
Hyphenated Iranians Since 9/11:
Civil Liberties, Activism, and the Meaning of “Multiculturalism”
Moderator:
Shabnam Sharbatoghlie
Mahdis Keshavarz, activist and vice president of Riptide Communications
Civil Liberties and Socio-Political ResponsibilitiesBabak Hoghooghi, Iranian American Bar Association
Image, Politics and the Law; Thoughts on Empowering the Iranian-American CommunityDr. Nahid Mozaffari, PEN
Notes from the Underground of Treacherous Translating and Criminal EditingJian Ghomeshi, musical artist, writer, producer, and CBC television personality
**10 minute break**
2:30 - 4:00 Workshops (in smaller groups)
Connecting to Iran: NGO and Grassroots Efforts*
Led by Roshanak Ameli-Tehrani, Mosaic International, and Farshad Rastegar, Relief International-Schools Online
*Sponsored by Children of Persia“Contemporary Diaspora Poetry in Collaborative Performance,” The Translation Project DVD screening
Led by Niloufar Talebi, The Translation ProjectIs Language the Foundation of Identity?
Led by Roozbeh Shirazi, Iran Amin, and Vida NazemianIranian Americans and Political Campaign Contributions: Grass-roots Method of Political Campaign Fund-raising, a Proven Method that Works for our Community
Led by Elahe Enssani, Iranian American Chamber of Commerce (IACC), San Francisco State University“Red Lines and Deadlines,” film screening
Led by Taghi Amirani
**10 Minute Break**
4:10 - 6:15
-
Panel 3
-
Double Vision: Returning to Iran, Reflecting in the West
Moderator:
Taraneh Matin, Wellesley College
Roshanak Ameli-Tehrani, Mosaic International and Harvard University
Roxana Pope, director, writer, and singer
Taking the UK to Iran: Using the Arts as a Vehicle for Expression, Cultural Exchange, and Peace BuildingAfshin Molavi, Journalist
Persian PilgrimagesRamin Bajoghli, Boston University
Film screening: "Only in Iran"Negin Farsad, Comedian
Bootleg IslamTaghi Amirani, Independent Filmmaker
Making “Red Lines and Deadlines”
Closing Remarks
9:30pm Evening event: Shab-e Irooni! Including performances by Maz Jobrani, comedian, and Robert Karimi, spoken word artist, at Dream Night Club, Washington, DCDay 2: Sunday, April 24, 2005
10:00 - 11:15 Brunch and Discussion Tehrangeles: Defining “Iranian” Pop Culture?
Taghi Amirani, Independent Filmmaker
Film screening: “Tehrangeles”Farzaneh Hemmasi, Columbia University
Moving Bodies, Moving Images: Khordadian and Exile Popular Culture in Iran
11:30 - 1:20
-
Panel 1
- Second
Generation Iranians Looking Inward: Religion, Gender, and Sexuality
Moderator: Amy Malek, New
York University
Dr. Haideh Moghissi, York University
Exile as Home: Memory and Agency in the DiasporaDr. Fereydoun Safizadeh, Boston University
Children of the Revolution: Transnational Identity Among Young Iranians in Northern CaliforniaAmir Baradaran, Concordia University
Sexuality and the DiasporaSima Shakhsari, Stanford University
Iranian Queer Diaspora and the Discursive Construction of the Iranian HamjensgaraDr. Arlene Dallalfar, Lesley University
Negotiating Allegiances and Identities: The Iranian Jewish DiasporaDr. Shideh Hanassab, University of California, Los Angeles
Double Standards in Dating and Marriage: Young Iranians in the Diaspora
**10 minute break**
1:30 - 3:00 - Panel 2 - The Politics of Representation: Putting Ourselves on America’s Political Map
Moderator: Mani Parcham, George Mason University
Farzan Parsinejad, Iranian Studies Group (ISG)
Who Are We? A Socioeconomic Survey of Iranian-AmericansTrita Parsi, National Iranian-American Council (NIAC)
Iranian-Americans in the 2004 ElectionsSima Shakhsari, Stanford University
Iranian Diaspora and Transnational Governmentality: Representational Practices and Production of Democratic SubjectsNahal Naficy, Rice University
The City of Washington, Iranians, and Politics in a Persian Miniature Landscape
Closing Remarks
3:30 - 5:30 pm Special Event: Book Launch and Signing Reception
Launch of new PEN Anthology, Strange Times, My Dear: an Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (Arcade Publishing: New York, 2005). Featuring editors Nahid Mozaffari and Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, and selected authors Goli Taraqqi, Nasim Khaksar, Roya Hakakian, and Niloufar Talebi
2005 Conference
Participants' Bios and Abstracts
Roshanak Ameli-Tehrani is founder and president of Mosaic International, a non-profit organization serving to connect the Iranian Diaspora with social change innovators at the grassroots level in Iran. Ms. Ameli-Tehrani’s professional and educational experience has focused on social entrepreneurship as a means of creating sustainable social change from the ground-up. She has worked in Nepal, India, Iran, United States, and Latin America on a wide range of initiatives including micronutrition, women-run cooperatives, child sexual exploitation and urban renewal. A graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Ms. Ameli-Tehrani is currently working on her first book, a series of essays on Iran.
Taghi Amirani arrived in England from Iran in the summer of 1975 to learn English. He stayed. Between 1980 and 1986 he studied physics at Nottingham University and film and TV at the University of Bristol. In 1989 after a year of doing freelance television research Mr. Amirani was commissioned by Channel 4's flagship science series, Equinox, to produce and direct his first broadcast film, Earth Calling Basingstoke. He went on to direct two more films for Channel 4 before setting up Amirani Films in 1993 with his brother Amir. Mr Amirani has directed 36 documentaries for British, French, and American television. His latest film is “Red Lines and Deadlines” about Shargh, Iran’s leading reformist newspaper. The film was made for the 2004 PBS series Wide Angle and has been screened in the US, Canada, Japan and Australia. Mr Amirani is now working on “Iranian Inside Out”, a feature length documentary on the Iranian Diaspora.
Iran Arbabi Amin completed undergraduate studies and Teacher Training School in Tehran, where she taught philosophy and Persian literature in high school for two years. Later, she joined the Iranian National Radio and Television as a news commentator and translator. She left Iran in 1976 to study at the Sorbonne, in Paris, where she earned two MA's and a Ph.D. in political science. She came to the United States in 1981 and since 1983 has been working for Montgomery County Public Schools, in Maryland. She founded the Iran Cultural and Educational Center in 1989 as a non-profit organization that offers Farsi classes to youngsters in the metropolitan area.
Tara Bahrampour lived in Iran until 1979, when her family joined the diaspora of those displaced by the Iranian revolution. She attended high school in Portland, Oregon and Palo Alto, California, and received a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, though she has never forgotten her 5th-grade ambition to make the cheerleader squad at The Community School in Tehran. She is the author of the memoir To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), and has written about Iranians in global limbo for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and other journals. She is a staff writer at The Washington Post.
Ramin Bajoghli is a third year student at Boston University where he studies philosophy and political science. He actively participates with Global Learning, an international non-profit/non-governmental organization working in public schools across Central America. When he is finished with his studies, he aspires to be a film director making documentaries and feature films that creates a forum for discussion regarding important social issues around the world.
Amir Baradaran is enrolled in master of Communications Studies at Concordia University and has an honours degree in International Development Studies from McGill University. He is interested in the intersection of racialised, sexualized and gendered identities and notions of Canadian nationhood within the context of cultural globalisation. He has occupied leading roles in Quebec's student movement, Iranian diasporic cultural and artistic institutions, and different Queer organizations, including Egale Canada, where he co-founded the National Two-Spirited and Queers of Colours Caucus. Amir Baradaran has also received the distinguished 2003 Iranian Canadian Activist award from the Iranian Women's Association of Montreal.
Arlene Dallalfar is a professor of Sociology at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received her PhD from UCLA and is interested in studying Middle Eastern Americans in the United States. Professor Dallalfar has published and researched issues related to Iranian immigrants for the past two decades, including “Iranian Women as Immigrant Entrepreneurs” in Gender and Society and “The Iranian Ethnic Economy in Los Angeles: Gender and Entrepreneurship” in the edited book Family and Gender Among American Muslims: Issues Facing Middle Eastern Immigrants and their descendents. Professor Dallalfar’s areas of interest include gender and family dynamics as well as intergenerational issues facing Iranians in the United States. She is presently involved in an ethnographic study addressing religio-ethnic identity and diversity among Jewish and Muslim Iranians in California and New York.
Dr.
Elahe Enssani is Professor and Chair of Civil Engineering at San
Francisco State University. Although her academic training has been in Math
and Engineering, for which she has been recognized by the International
Biographical Center (IBC) in Cambridge, England, as one of the top 100
scientists in her field, Elahe has always been a writer, poet, and
passionate about politics and people. Her non-technical writings have mainly
been about issues involving immigration and being an immigrant. Her passion
and activism have been around facilitating civic participation of the
Iranian-Americans living in diaspora with an important component of
empowering the community to contribute funds for political campaigns.
Her passion is to bring together the Iranian-Americans and other communities
(such as the Indian-Americans) so they can empower each other and become
more powerful in supporting candidates for Political Office.
Negin Farsad is a New York-based comedian and her one-woman show, "Bootleg Islam," breaks the seal on Gen X Iranians in America. "Bootleg Islam" has been performed in comedy festivals around the country to sold out houses in Chicago and New York. Negin has been a Critic's Choice of Time Out New York, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Reader among others. Her work has been called "smart, funny and fascinating" by the Wall Street Journal and "poised and humorous... irreverant but affectionate" by Curtain Up. She has published comedy pieces in various magazines (Jest, Communique) and has performed in innumerable comedy venues around New York. She was classically trained in acting at Cornell University and has non-classically trained in improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade and People's Improv Theatres.
Jian Ghomeshi is a multi-talented musical artist, writer, producer and television personality born in London, England and now based in Toronto, Canada. He is the face of national arts and entertainment for CBC and CBC Newsworld and has been the host of >play, a weekly national arts and entertainment talk show that appeared live on CBC Newsworld. Mr. Ghomeshi is perhaps best known as a singer, drummer and songwriter in the multi-platinum selling folk-rock group, Moxy Fruvous. He is currently working on his debut solo album and follow-up to "the first six songs" EP. Most recently, Mr. Ghomeshi has formed his own production company, wonderboy entertainment inc., and emerged as an acclaimed young producer of artists including Dar Williams and rising Canadian stars Martina Sorbara and Valerie, whom he also manages. Mr. Ghomeshi has also become a widely read editorial columnist. His latest opinion pieces have been published in the Sunday Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune and the Globe and Mail. Mr. Ghomeshi takes pride in his Iranian heritage as well as his Canadian citizenship. He holds a degree in Political Science and History.
Roya Hakakian has collaborated on over a dozen hours of programming for some of the most prestigious journalism units on network television, including 60 Minutes Sunday and 60 Minutes II as well as on A& E's "Travels With Harry" hour, and ABC Documentary Specials with Peter Jennings, Discovery and The Learning Channel. Commissioned by UNICEF, Ms. Hakakian’s most recent film, “Armed and Innocent,” on the subject of the involvement of underage children in wars around the world, has been selected among best short documentaries at several festivals, most recently as an official entry of the 2003 Telluride Mountain Film Festival. Ms. Hakakian is the author of two highly acclaimed collections of poetry, the first of which, For the Sake of Water, received honorable mention in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World and was nominated as the poetry book of the year by Iran News in 1993. She writes for numerous publications, including the Washington Post, and the Weekly Forward, and is a contributor to NPR's Weekend Edition. Most recently, Ms. Hakakian was the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and the 2003 Dewitt/Wallace Reader’s Digest Fellowship in writing. She is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No (Crown) is Elle Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2004.
Dr. Shideh Hanassab is the Director of Research at UCLA's Office of International Students and Scholars. Her research has focused on the adjustment process of immigrants in the U.S. She has conducted studies of first and second generation Iranians in the U.S., and published several articles. She also teaches Multicultural Counseling and Service Learning courses at UCLA.
Taraneh Hemami received her MFA from California College of the Arts with distinction in 1991 and has been exhibiting her work widely ever since. Her recent project Hall of Reflections project has been exhibited at solo and curated exhibitions at San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Worth Ryder Gallery at University of California, Berkeley and Sharjah 6th International Biennial, and has been awarded a Creative Work Fund, a San Francisco Arts Commission's Cultural Equity Grant and a California Stories Fund through the California Council for the Humanities. She is currently the Artist-in Residence at the Center for Public Life at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA.
Farzaneh Hemmasi is a doctoral candidate in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University. Her research focuses on music and media of Iran and the disapora, with related interests in cultural policy and diplomacy, dance, and contemporary "club cultures". She has previously worked in internet radio, and for the Open Society Insitute/Soros Foundation.
Babak Hoghooghi is an attorney practicing at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Washington, D.C. Mr. Hoghooghi's practice is focused on the development, financing and acquisition of international and domestic power projects. He is admitted to the bar in the State of New York and the District of Columbia. Mr. Hoghooghi is a founder, Board Member and the current President of The Iranian-American Bar Association. He is also a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Iranian American Political Action Committee. Mr. Hoghooghi obtained his law degree in 1994 at Georgetown. Before entering law school, he received a Masters degree in Structural Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and worked as a professional engineer in California.
Maz Jobrani is a master wonchi artist - an ancient martial art that combines painting with kicking butt. He is also on the board of neighborhood dogwatchers - a committee committed to committing nothing to no one at no time. His hobbies include blue sky watching and breathing. When Maz was a child in the Alborz mountains of Iran, a spirit came to him and told him he would one day be a doctor. When Maz realized what bullshit that was he was able to concentrate his energies on getting poon. Today, after many years of making raspberry jams for the exiled King of Cypress, Maz spends most of his time acting, writing and doing standup. You can catch Maz almost every weekend at the Comedy Store or the Laugh Factory on Sunset Blvd. He can also be seen at the ACME Comedy Theater, where his work has been called "devilishly funny" and "extraordinary" by The LA Weekly and The Backstage West.
Persis M. Karim is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University in San Jose CA. She is the co-editor/co-author of A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans and a second anthology (forthcoming) titled "Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora." She is currently working on a study of Iranian diaspora literature and film titled "In the Belly of the Great Satan."
Mahdis Keshavarz, Vice President, Riptide Communications, Inc. has been involved in public relations since 1992. She has served as a coordinator for The Hague Appeal for Peace, an international peace conference in the Netherlands with high level representatives from over 100 nations. Since joining Riptide Communications, she has worked extensively on women’s and immigrants rights campaigns, most notably the Beijing +5 United Nations Conference on Women and the consequences suffered by the Middle Eastern and South Asian community in the post 9-11 climate. She is currently working on the media campaign surrounding the indefinite detentions of foreign nationals on Guantanamo Bay which will be argued before the Supreme Court April 19th. Ms. Keshavarz is a founding Board Member of the Arab American Justice Project.
Haideh Moghissi teaches sociology and women’s studies at Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies and the Faculty of Graduate Studies, York University, Toronto. Before leaving Iran in 1984, she was a founder of the Iranian National Union of Women and member of its first executive board and editorial board of Barabari (equality) and Zanan Dar Mobarezeh (Women in Struggle). Haideh Moghissi has served as a commentator on Iran and women in the Middle East on BBC World Service, CBC, Radio France, and Voice of America. Her publications include articles in refereed journals and chapters in edited volumes and following books: Women and Islam: Critical Concepts in Sociology (ed.) London: Routledge (2005); Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis, London: Oxford University Press 2000 (Zed Press, 1999, winner of Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award) and Populism and Feminism in Iran :Women's Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement, London: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin's Press (1994). She has served as the Coordinator of Certificate for Anti-Racist Research and Practice (CARRP), Chair of the Executive Committee of Center for Feminist Research, and is a member of the Executive Committee of Center for Refugee Studies at York University.
Afshin Molavi is the author of Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran, which was named by Lonely Planet as one of two "must-reads" for travelers to Iran, nominated for the Thomas Cook literary travel book of the year award and described by Foreign Affairs as "a brilliant tableau of today's Iran." Molavi has covered Iran for the Washington Post and Reuters and his articles have appeared, among other places, in the Financial Times, the New Republic, and Foreign Policy. He is currently a fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan public policy think tank devoted to pragmatic solutions to the nation's and global problems.
Nahid Mozaffari has edited Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature, which will be published in April 2005 by Arcade Publishing. She is involved in a number of other projects to promote the translation and publication of Middle Eastern literature for the general public. She has taught Middle Eastern history at the New School in New York, and at Cabot University in Rome, Italy. She received her Ph.D. in history and Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University. Her research on intellectuals in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution is being revised for publication.
Nahal Naficy is a Ph.D. student in cultural anthropology at Rice University, Houston, TX. She is currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork among a number of Iranian and American NGOs and scholar/activists in Washington, D.C.
Vida Nazemian is a student in the Curriculum and Teaching department at Teachers College, Columbia University. She anticipates receiving her MA in Elementary Eduaction this May. Her current area of concentration is urban, public elementary education and hopes to extend her work to include her passion for traveling by teaching in the Middle East and other areas of the world. She is fluent in Farsi, French, and Italian.
Trita Parsi is President of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies under Professor Francis Fukuyama, while working part-time as a policy advisor to Chairman Robert Ney (R-OH) on the Middle East and Iran.
Farzan Parsinejad is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at Northeastern University, Boston. He is a member of executive board of Iranian Studies Group and is the project manager of the 2005 Iranian-American Community Survey.
Roxana Pope is an Anglo-Iranian actor, director, writer and singer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Over the last ten years, Ms. Pope has been involved in implementing creative arts programs and performance projects in Bosnia Herzegovina, the Republic of Georgia, East Africa, Turkey and Iran as she focuses on how the arts play a crucial role as a vehicle for expression, cultural exchange and peace building. In 2001 and 2003 Ms. Pope was invited to run theatre/music/dance workshops & performances during the International Fadjr Arts Festival in Tehran. The workshops included a group of Iranian actors, musicians and designers who collaborated with a group of artists from the UK, this first of its kind. Ms. Pope also wrote and directed a film entitled “Leila” (Cineworks/Scottish Screen), a “coming of age” story about a young Iranian girl whose family seeks asylum and a new life in Scotland.
Farshad Rastegar is founder and CEO of Relief International (RI). Dr. Rastegar obtained his MA and PhD at UCLA. He has also been a lecturer at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education, Sociology and Political Science departments. Following his dissertation research on the political socialization of Afghan refugees, Dr. Rastegar founded RI in 1990 with a focus on assisting refugees and disaster victims through innovative empowerment strategies utilizing integrated, community development, multi-sectoral approaches. At RI he has helped develop an organization specialized in transitioning societies from relief to development and from centralized to market economies. Dr. Rastegar has personally worked in active conflict areas such as Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Sudan, and Tajikistan as well as in post natural disaster contexts such as Nicaragua, Jordan, and Iran. Since March 2003, with the merger of RI with Schools Online (SOL), an international non-profit dedicated to leveraging the power of Information Communication Technology in development and education, Dr. Rastegar assumed the role of CEO at RI-SOL. Today RI-SOL works in 39 countries.
Fereydoun Safizadeh is a lecturer in socio-cutlural anthropology at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has thought anthropology at UCLA, San Francisco State University and Amherst College. He has on-going research on the dynamics of social, economic, political, and cultural relationships among landowning, commercial, bureaucratic and clerical families in Tabriz, Iran and carried out research in the Republic of Azerbaijan and in northern California among young Iranians. His areas of interest include urban kinship and family structure, peasant economy and politics, politics of identity, ethnicity and nationalism and ethnographic film.
Sima Shakhsari is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford and teaches as a lecturer at San Francisco State University. She has a M.A. in Women’s Studies and one in Anthropology, and is interested in issues of gender, sexuality, nationalism and transnationalism. Sima’s current ethnographic research is on different forms of governmentality and resistance in weblogistan.
Roozbeh Shirazi is an MA student in Comparative International Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. His area of interest is education in the Middle East and Central Asia, focusing on the role of education in democratization and political transformation. Roozbeh has worked as a first grade teacher in Jersey City NJ, a program evaluator in Tajikistan, and an educational consultant in Afghanistan. He is fluent in Persian and Spanish, and anticipates beginning his doctoral studies in Fall 2005.
Niloufar Talebi was born in London to Iranian parents and lived in Iran intermittently until the age of fifteen. She received a BA in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine and is an MFA candidate in Writing and Literature at Bennington College. She created The Translation Project in 2002, and as its first project, is currently editing and translating an anthology of contemporary Iranian poetry in diaspora since 1979, as well as creating a DVD of this poetry in performance. She is the recipient of the International Center for Writing and Translation’s (ICWT) translation award.
Abstracts
Roshanak Ameli-Tehrani
Connecting to Iran: NGOs and
Grassroots Efforts
Non-government organizations and grassroots initiatives have been used
successfully in numerous countries as a means of creating sustainable social
change. Such movements not only address a specific social need, such as
education or health, they also strengthen the social fabric of a community
and create the social structures needed to create accountability at all
levels of society. NGOs and grassroots efforts have been a cornerstone of
social progress in the US. Within developing countries, such initiatives
have had some of the most impressive impacts of any development efforts to
date.
Such initiatives are starting to take shape in Iran. This workshop will address the following areas:
1.
What does the NGO and
grassroots movement in Iran look like today?
2.
What are the potential impacts of such movements?
3.
How can the Iranian Diaspora support such movements as a means of:
a. Addressing issues such as poverty and child homelessness;
b. Strengthening the connection between the Diaspora and Iranians in
Iran;
c. Exploring our own identity as part of the Diaspora;
d. Shifting the image of Iran globally; and
e. Strengthening the Iranian Diaspora community and its impact on the
future of Iran.
During the
panel discussion, Ms Ameli-Tehrani will speak about her own experiences of
going back with the sole purpose of finding how she can be of service to
Iran. She will discuss the messages she received during the numerous
interviews she conducted. She will also cover the long-term vision of Mosaic
International and the next steps for reaching that vision.
Iran Amin, Montgomery County Public Schools
The Importance and the
Challenges of Heritage Language Learning
This workshop will focus on three interrelated themes:
1.
The research findings on heritage language learning and the rise of interest
in preserving heritage languages
2.
The unique and common challenges facing the Iranian community to preserve
its mother language by transferring it to the second generation
3.
Some reflections on possible next steps to meet some of the most basic
challenges.
Taghi Amirani
Red Lines
and Deadlines - screening of the PBS Wide Angle documentary on
Shargh, Iran's leading reformist newspaper.
Shot in the summer of 2004, the 53-minute documentary tells the story of three weeks in the life of Shargh's young journalists as they go about their job, tap dancing their way through Iran's press laws and staying out of trouble.
Arlene Dallalfar, Lesley University
Negotiated
Allegiances and Identities: The Iranian Jewish Diaspora
The Iranian diaspora illustrates the importance of addressing the presence of sub-groups within a broader national grouping. Jewish Iranians are an example of internal ethnicity among Iranians. Since Iranians are not ethnically homogenous, their ethnicity is not synonymous with their nationality as their primary identity. In fact, prior to the revolution as well as currently in Iran, for Iranian Jews their religio-ethnic identity as Jews is their primary identity as they negotiate experiences across cultural, economic, and political spheres. In Iran, being Jewish and part of a religious minority is a major marker of one’s identity. Since 1979, thousands of Iranian Jews have immigrated to the United States, as legal immigrants, exiles, refugees and asylees. Jewish Iranians in California or New York have entered a social/cultural context where other non-Iranian Jewish populations have established themselves, primarily within the American Ashkenazi and lesser so Sephardic cultural milieu. Iranian Jews since 1979 have introduced different cultural, linguistic, social, economic and religious practices to the North American landscape. There has been resistance to the “assimilationist” model and the Iranian communities have not joined the melting pot. In fact, Iranian Jews are an example of the “unmeltable ethnics”, maintaining their language, establishing their own cultural and artistic centers, synagogues, and business alliances that allow them to maintain their mizrahi Jewish identity as well as their Iranian and Middle Eastern identity in the U.S. In this presentation I will explore these multiple and intersecting dimensions of identity in the Iranian Jewish communities in the United States.
Elahe
Enssani, Iranian American Chamber of Commerce (IACC), San Francisco State
University
Iranian Americans and Political
Campaign Contributions: Grass-roots Method of Political Campaign
Fund-raising: A Proven Method that works for Our Community
One important
aspect of Civic Society participation is political campaign contribution. It
is indeed a privilege of Civic Society participation to be able to support a
political candidate and have an effect in that candidate’s win. Those of us
who have tried to raise money from our community for political causes have
noticed that this is indeed a very difficult task.
A recent internet survey on the status of Iranian Community in the United
States showed that 70% of the members of our community do not make any
political campaign contributions. The same survey revealed that the other
30% make contributions of $100.00 or less!
Given this knowledge (its validity was tested in Northern California), how can we raise money for political campaigns and how can we empower our community to give more? This is a two-part question. It is easy to answer the second part as once we have a win we can create a buzz and the community will be empowered. However, the answer to the first part needs careful design of a method that works.
To design
this method, we first have to understand our community in Diaspora and
identify its dominant characteristics. Here is what was found in a recent
attempt to design the method that resulted in a major win:
First, the Iranian Americans in Diaspora, for the most part, continue their
Iranian tradition of living within the boundaries of a tribal society.
Second, the Iranian Americans in Diaspora are part of a community that is
fragmented or not connected. To borrow the terminology from the network
science, the community is a “distributed” one with many nodes we can call
“little tribes” and few links to connect them together. Third, once one
knows that the going rate of contribution is $ 100.00, in order to meet any
monetary goal, more people need to be involved and contribute.
Therefore, by connecting the nodes through identifying the links and also creating more links, one can maximize the collective amount of contributions. This is called “networking” a “distributed” community. I call this a “Grass-roots Method” of fund-raising where each node (little tribe) gets involved, participates and connects to the other nodes.
In brief, here is how I recently designed and tested this method to raise political campaign funds: After exhausting my own “little tribe” of family and friends for monetary contributions, I went to each friend and asked them to go to their respective “little tribe” and raise money. In a succession, that person, asked members of his/her “little tribe” to go their respective ones and to continue the process. Very soon, we had every body involved and our fragmented community not only was “networked” but also “cross-linked”.
In this workshop, I will explain in detail how this was done, and how it can also be a template for other communities in Diaspora.
Negin
Farsad
Writing Ethnic Comedy: The Iran Files
Negin will use some very serious fake diagrams, flow charts, and badamjan-based
regression analysis to reveal the tools necessary for writing
Iranian-American comedy. Her scientific case studies will be complemented by
a discussion of her travels to Iran, how her one-person comedy Bootleg Islam
emerged from those travels, and why her director is a blond girl from the
backwoods of upstate New York.
Shideh Hanassab, University of California, Los Angeles
Double standards in dating &
marriage: Young Iranians in the diaspora
Young Iranians in the U.S. are caught between two cultures. They are torn between the extent to which they should adapt to the American way of life or retain their original culture and traditions, especially in regards to dating and marriage. This paper focuses on traditional (Iranian) versus liberal (American) attitudes of young Iranians regarding mate selection. It compares the attitudes of young Muslim Iranians and young Jewish Iranians regarding interethnic and inter-religious dating and marriage and identifies reasons for differences that emerge. Furthermore, this study examines the differences between male and female Iranians' attitudes regarding interethnic and inter-religious dating and marriage as well as double standards that exist.
Two hundred
fourteen single Iranian students at the University of California, Los
Angeles (UCLA) responded to a mailed questionnaire. Seven instruments were
used in this questionnaire: Acculturation Scale, Religiosity Measure,
Parent-Child Relationship Scale, Attitudes toward Women Scale, Dating
Pattern Scale, Attitudes toward Mate Selection Scale, and a Demographic
Survey. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to the data
set to address the hypotheses. Individual face-to-face interviews were also
conducted with 20 of the respondents who volunteered to be interviewed. The
interviews complemented the survey data. The results indicate that Muslim
Iranians' attitudes are more liberal regarding mate selection than those of
Jewish Iranians. Male Iranians' attitudes are more liberal regarding mate
selection than those of female Iranians. Double standards are also found
between males and females dating experiences. The findings also indicate
that young Iranians' attitudes regarding mate selection can be predicted by
their acculturation level, religiosity level, sex role attitudes, and dating
pattern. The results of this study indicate differential assimilation
between Muslim Iranians and Jewish Iranians; Muslims seem to be assimilating
faster than Jewish Iranians.
Taraneh Hemami, artist
Hall of Reflections:
Remembrances of Iranian Immigrants
Hall of Reflections is a multi-dimensional archive of personal photographs and narratives exploring the complex migrant experience of men and women of the Iranian Diaspora. Exhibited through site-specific installations and virtual spaces, the archive draws on Persian and Islamic designs and structures to construct layers of historical and cultural references.
Hall of Reflections presents a wide range of immigrant experiences, countering the de-humanizing and hostile images of Iranians and Moslems portrayed in the popular media. By bringing personal stories out of isolation and presenting them collectively as part of a larger narrative of a people, the project gives voice to a community that has been rendered invisible or reduced to negative stereotypes. The stories and photographs presented in various site-specific installations create a much needed space where Iranians and their U.S. born children are represented positively, and where, through a complex lens, their memories and histories are celebrated and acknowledged as human stories.
Hall of
Reflections installations are inspired by the traditional mirrored gathering
hall of historical buildings in Iran. Displaying photographs and texts on
mirror and glass, these exhibits make available private testimonies of
migration, exile, displacement and assimilation belonging to a
cross-generational and cross-cultural mix of Bay Area Iranians.
Farzaneh Hemmasi, Columbia University
Moving Bodies, Moving Images:
Khordadian and Exile Popular Culture in Iran
In the summer of 2002, the Iranian born dancer Mohammad Khordadian was convicted of promoting corruption within Iran during his first visit there in more than 20 years. While social dance in sexually mixed environments has been illegal in Iran since the 1979 Revolution, Khordadian’s case is unique because he was charged with corruption Iranian youth via the distribution of instructional dance videos and broadcasts of his television appearances on illegal satellite television. These videos and broadcasts are part of the continuous flow of music and related media from diasporic peripheries into Iran, which, despite the Islamic Republic’s best efforts, could not be contained. Using Khordadian’s case as a reference point, this paper investigates the relationship between media produced outside of Iran and received within the country’s borders, as it asks where and how “Iranian” popular culture is defined. The paper also explores some of the parameters for defining certain types of music and dance as “corrupting” or transgressive in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the larger Iranian cultural sphere through Anthony Shay’s concept of “choreophobia” (Shay 1999) and through visual excerpts of Khordadian’s videos.
Persis Karim, San Jose State University
Writing Ourselves into History:
Literature and the Construction of Iranian-American Identity
Iranian-Americans have long had the shadow of the hostage crisis hanging
over them, contributing to a negative image of this immigrant community in
the US media. But 2004, marked 25 years since the Iranian Revolution and the
passage of time has meant the coming of a new generation of
Iranian-Americans who are attempting to define themselves outside the frame
of those initial historical events that brought them to this country. This
paper will explore the way that first and second generation writers have
begun to construct an identity for themselves through the writing of poetry,
prose (memoirs) and novels. In particular, I will examine examples of first
generation, second generation Iranian-American writers and explore the ways
that these writers address some of their concerns around history, politics,
assimilation, and some of the uneasy ways that Iranians continue to have to
define themselves against the history of their immigration and the way that Americans perceive the Islamic Republic
of Iran. The paper will use some of the writing published in the anthology A
World Between: Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian-Americans and of
three recently published memoirs:, Funny in Farsi, To See and See Again, and
Journey from the Land of No, all written by women to investigate the way
that women in particular have taken up the genre of memoir to articulate
their passage from Iranians to Iranian-Americans and to become critically engaged with their
identity.
Haideh Moghissi, School of
Social Sciences, Atkinson Faculty, York University, Canada
Exile as Home: Memory and agency in the Diaspora
Can remembering be transformative? It is said that for a person in the
diaspora memory is often the only thing from whom it cannot be taken away.
Memory help us to feel connected to our past and to transcend the present,
for connecting to the future yet to come, or that we believe to be coming.
However, memory can be transformative only we have survived a wounding
experience. It gives us hope that we will survive the troubling present.
Excessive indulgence in memory of the time passed and things lost can
prevent diasporas from accepting the reality of change; it might destroy
hopes for constructing if not a better, but at least a different future.
Understanding identity as something “not about being but about becoming,” the paper would argue that who we are should not depend on what we remember once we were. Using the example of the Iranian Diaspora and the gender character of diasporic experience, I would argue that remembering is also about forgetting. Forgetting would stop the free float in the zone of past, in the territory that has become unreal and only the sensation of memory keeps it alive. Forgetting or, at least, selective act of remembering can in fact stir hopes in the possibility of constructing a future and will be translated into action in that direction.
Afshin Molavi
Persian Pilgrimages
Molavi will talk about the complexities, pitfalls, and rewards of
interpreting and writing about Iran for a Western audience and how -- as he
traveled across Iran -- he was thrust into the position of interpreting "the
West" for Iranians.
Nahid
Mozaffari, PEN
Notes from the Underground of
Treacherous Translating and Criminal Editing
Every book contains many stories, not only in between its pages, but behind and around its creation as well. In this presentation, I will discuss how the project to publish Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (Arcade, 2005) was conceived, pursued and completed, what challenges we encountered on the way, and how these challenges are applicable to the Iranian community at large.
When Iranian writers, artists, filmmakers and musicians visit the United States, they are surprised by how little the general public really knows about Iran. As Iranians living here, we too, are familiar with the problem that since the revolution of 1979, the sound bites, images and words that have reached the TV screen, radio, news media and most books in this country have been overwhelmingly negative. (Threatening Bearded Men and Angry Women in Black) We try to battle these stereotypes in our own work and social spaces. For those of us in academics, literature, and the arts, it is very significant to note that according to a report by the National Endowment for the Arts, only 3% of books published in the United States are translations from other languages. (In contrast to 40-50% in Western Europe.) Let us not even try to venture what percentage of that 3% belongs to literature from the Axis of Evil!
This is why, despite all odds, a group of us decided to compile, translate and publish (for the general public) a collection of stories, excerpts of novels, and poems written by Iranians in Iran and abroad since the revolution of 1979. Our aim was to take a small step in making Iranian literature a part of world literature, accessible to the general Western reader, but also to show through these stories and poems, the diversity and hybridity of Iran and Iranian culture itself. Multiple cultures, languages, ethnicities, religions and world views have co-existed in this land for thousands of years and continue to do so despite the shocks of traumatic events or the passage of transient ideologies.
In my
presentation, I will discuss how our project led us through treacherous
alleys, beginning with the consultation, compilation and translation
processes, and proceeding through various levels of economic as well as
political censorship not only in Iran but in the United States as well.
Nahal
Naficy, Rice University
The City of Washington, Iranians, and
Politics in a Persian Miniature Landscape
“Like
Timbuktu, Sodom, and Babylon, the City of Washington shimmers on the edge of
reality, more a state of mind than a physical place. Its blurred pastiche of
scandal, power, and money in inconceivably enormous sums combines to paint a
larger than life scene that provokes awe, comedy, and dread.” This
presentation is not about Washington per se as described by McIver
Weatherford in Tribes on the Hill but about how Iran gets negotiated in this
space that clearly has its own distinct life and spirit. It is about the
intersection of Washington as the physical capital of the United States and
Washington as the symbolic capital of power and policy. It is also about the
intersection of the US’s new foreign policy orientation that links freedom
in Iran to safety in the US on one hand and the long-standing work of
Iranian organizations and individuals for various interpretations of
“freedom” in Iran on the other. It is about how Iranian NGOs and
scholar/activists joggle, utilize, and affect the currents of power and
money that circulate in this jungle of NGOs, think tanks, lobbies, funding
agencies, and policy making authorities. And what does this process say
about, and do to, the Iranians’ political and civil subjectivity, about/to
their sense of themselves and of their agency as citizens? It is about the
city, civic education and participation, civil society, and citizenship. To
me the scene is strikingly similar to the landscape of a Persian miniature
painting, with figures always luring from behind the bushes and half-open
doors and half-drawn curtains, biting the finger of astonishment, holding
their hands in front of their mouths to gossip or share a secret. Often
during my fieldwork in the past 7 months, the city of Washington has melted
into the landscape of a Persian miniature, with different planes of time and
space patched side by side to create a sense of coherence that borders
finely with an utter sense of haphazard union.
Vida
Nazemian and Roozbeh Shirazi, Columbia University
Iranians and the Persian-Speaking
Community in New York: A Study Exploring Language, Identity, and Attitudes
in New York City
In New York,
the 2000 census puts the number of Iranians residing in the state of New
York at 22,856, with the majority living in Queens and Long Island. New
York’s Iranians are not concentrated in a specific neighborhood and
consequently, are not among the city’s higher profile ethnic communities,
such as the Chinese in Chinatown, Dominicans in Washington Heights, African
Americans in Harlem, and Puerto Ricans in the South Bronx. For this and many
other reasons, there has been very little information available on the
Iranian community in New York. The aim of this study is to explore how New
York City Iranians view themselves, their language, and community at large.
This project involves collecting surveys and interviews with different
Iranian residents of New York City in order to learn more about language
habits and the history of language use in the community. The surveys address
attitudes and perceptions of the Persian language (Farsi) and being Iranian
in New York City, the importance of the language in defining identity, and
how Iranians interact with each other.
Another aim of the project is to identify what networks, media,
organizations, and institutions exist for New York City Iranians, and what
their plans are for the future. The views of artists and media figures
within the Iranian community are explored as well. This information was
gathered in interviews with representatives from different groups and
performers.
Finally, a literature review and examination of statistical information was
used to create a brief history of the Iranian experience in the US,
specifically New York. The researchers decided to involve various
Iranian-American organizations in an attempt to both learn about the
community and find participants for interviews and surveys.
Farzan Parsinejad, Director of 2005 Iranian-American Community Survey,
Iranian Studies Foundation
Who are we? A Socioeconomic Survey of
Iranian-Americans
The Iranian Studies Group at MIT has conducted a comprehensive survey of the Iranian-American community on a national basis. In the first stage, we started with a survey focused on Iranian-Americans in the Boston area in December 2004. The survey has been conducted online and can be found at http://web.mit.edu/isg/survey.htm
Within this project we are trying to understand the common needs of individuals of Iranian ancestry who consider the United States their primary home, including U.S. citizens, permanent residents and those living in the United States in the process of becoming immigrants. The goal of this survey is to provide community members and community leaders with information that would help them better cater to the needs of the community. The scope of the survey has been nationwide, and we have tried to be as inclusive as possible. Currently two different surveys are being devised, one for those Iranian-Americans born and raised in the U.S. (second generation Iranian-Americans) and one geared towards those who came to the U.S. as adults (or first generation Iranian-Americans).
The need for such a survey came from the realization that the needs, concerns and nature of the Iranian-American community cannot be understood merely by looking at census data or related information. Community leaders have long realized that despite a history of success stories of Iranian-American individuals, and the high educational and economic status the community has been less cohesive than many other ethnic groups in the U.S. There seems to be a serious shortage of understanding of the Iranian-American community’s needs and concerns. A similar survey was held in the summer of 2004 by a group of Iranian-American organizations with BAI Voters Association taking the lead, focusing in civic participation. By sharing our survey information and resources with other Iranian-American organizations and individuals, we hope to get a better picture of the needs of our community.
Tens of Iranian-American organizations were consulted for designing the survey, and many academics and community leaders provided feedbacks on its development and design. The survey is to be carried out between January-March 2005, and is scheduled to be repeated annually, to enable the tracking of changes in the community over time.
The survey
has 34 questions and we are going to present the preliminary results in the
conference.
Roxana Pope, director, writer, singer
Taking the UK to
Iran: Using the Arts as a Vehicle for Expression, Cultural Exchange and
Peace Building
Over the last ten years, Ms. Pope has been involved in implementing creative arts programs and performance projects in Bosnia Herzegovina, the Republic of Georgia, East Africa, Turkey and Iran. During the presentation she will describe how the arts play a crucial role as a vehicle for expression, cultural exchange and peace building.
She will talk specifically about the artistic projects she has set up and delivered in Iran. In 2001 and 2003 Ms. Pope was invited to run theatre/music/dance workshops & performances during the International Fadjr Arts Festival in Tehran. She will be showing footage of the performances they created at the National Theatre with a group of Iranian actors, musicians and designers who collaborated with a group of artists from the UK (this first of its kind). Through her presentation, Ms. Pope hopes to give an interesting insight into the creative process, challenges and rewards they encountered working artistically in Iran.
To conclude, she will raise some of the issues that face Iranians seeking asylum in the UK by showing clips from her film “Leila” (Cineworks/Scottish Screen) which is a “coming of age” story about a young Iranian girl whose family seek asylum and a new life in Scotland.
Children of the Revolution: Transnational Identity Among Young Iranians in Northern California
Robert Cole
argued that a nation's politics becomes a child's everyday psychology. How
true this is with respect to many young Iranians who came to the United
States as the children of immigrants, refugees, exiles, or asylees in the
aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. These children have lived
and grown up with the displacing effects of the revolution and their
immigration from Iran, as well as the fallout from the political relations
between the United States and Iran. Many of their parents, themselves
struggling with the impact of displacement, have not been able to do much
about the effects of international and local politics on their children. For
the most part, the parents do not know how the children experience,
understand, and perhaps resist or reshape the complex, frequently
contradictory cultural politics that inform their daily lives. What is clear
is that many children of Iranian background are growing up in politically
charged atmosphere of complex multi-ethnic and multicultural settings, that
demands they move in and out of diverse roles, and create identities that
often bewilder and sometimes trouble the parents. These children have become
the focal points for diverse and often contradictory identity claims -
Iranian, Persian, other minority identities within Iran, Iranian-American -
and their minds have become the terrain for adult battles.
My concern in this paper is to focus attention on the multi-faceted
identities forged by young Iranians in the United States, and more
specifically in northern California. The existing ethnographic data shows us
that Iranian children with quite diverse sets of experiences influenced by
variables such as the time of their arrival in the United States, gender;
English language familiarity, ethnic, religious, linguistic and class
backgrounds are communicating surprisingly well with one another about their
experiences and identity construction in this country. Many complicated
issues and discourses are handled with a high level of meaningful
interchange. My intention as a participant observer and as an anthropologist
has been to describe the complexity and nuances of their cultural and
identity reformulation, and attempt to provide a better understanding of the
dynamics and processes that these new young immigrants experience in a
transnational context. Through the use of video-taped open-ended discussions
and interviews this presentation attempts to make accessible such discourses
of identity construction to teachers, educators, social workers and others
whose practices require that they have a better understanding of the people
they teach or work with.
Sima
Shakhsari, Stanford University
Iranian Diaspora and Transnational
Governmentality: Representational Practices and Production of Democratic
Subjects
In March 2003, Kansas Senator, Sam Brownback proposed a legislation (S.RES. 81), which was introduced as “a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate concerning the continuous repression of freedoms within Iran and of individual human rights abuses, particularly with regard to women.” If passed, the bill would have funded Iranian opposition groups (in Iran and abroad) with the objective of “promoting democracy in Iran.” After the introduction of the “Iran Democracy Act,” the National Iranian-American council (NIAC) launched a web campaign to educate the Iranian diaspora in the U.S. about this act. In this paper, I explore the way this bill was represented, as well as the way this bill claimed to represent. As such, I will look at representation and production of subjects in two levels: 1. Techniques of representation and what they signify. 2. Politics of representation and organization of subjects into the realm of transnational politics.
To discuss the first level of representation, I look at the way this legislation was introduced on NIAC’s website. Using Baudrillard’s notion of advertisement and its relationship to mass and consumer society, I argue that the abstract idea of democracy constituted the fantasmic relation that was consumed in the personalized, yet collective method of NIAC’s rational reasoning. I examine the meanings produced in the interaction between NIAC’s website and the reader/consumer, in order to suggest that NIAC is a “disciplinary link,” (in a Foucauldian sense), an infra-law (sometimes “counterlaw”), and a “method of training that enables individuals to become integrated” into general demands of laws of democracy. While acknowledging the importance of NIAC’s activism, I suggest that this organization’s website, which is non-governmental and non-partisan, is a “panoptic modality of power” that guarantees submission of bodies in the name of juridical liberties.
To explore the second level of representation, I focus on the text of the Iran Democracy Act. I argue that the possibility of democracy and American subjectivity in this bill is constituted vis-a-vis the undemocratic, un-free, and repressed Iranian Other who “is yearning to live in freedom.” It was through the construction of this difference- between the sovereign subject in the “West” and the repressed but “aspiring” Iranian subject- that Sam Brownback sought to legitimize his civilizing mission. I show that Brownback’s project to take democracy to Iran not only relied on the construction of the undemocratic Other, but also deployed the trope of “woman” as its object of “concern” and “liberation.”
At the end, I
argue that the “ideoscape” of democracy is the terrain upon which struggles
over power and authority in Iran are fought. Within this field of power,
multiple forms of governmentality (and not just direct state regulation of
the society) take part in the construction of (trans)national subjects.
Whether through judicio-political enforcement or by indirect disciplining,
hegemonic concepts of democracy, freedom, and individuality participate in
the production of subjects who are suitable for the “international
community,” and are regulated by multiple modalities of governance.
Iranian Queer Diaspora and the Discursive Construction of the Iranian Hamjensgara
This paper examines articles in Homan, a diasporic Iranian queer magazine, in order to explore the construction of Iranian queer subjects through representational practices, and to investigate the ways by which this queer cultural production has negotiated a queer space within hegemonic heteronormative territorializations of the Iranian diaspora. Through surveying 18 issues of Homan since its inception in 1990, I contextualize this magazine in its spatial and temporal relation to multiple nation(alism)s, in order to show that Homan and the subjectivities it produces are both oppositional and complicit with hegemonic forms of knowledge in (trans)national contexts. By employing a transnational feminist cultural studies approach, I analyze notions of home, exile, Iranian-ness, and queerness within a matrix of gender, race, class, sexuality, and nation, in order to understand the discursive construction of locality and community through practices of place making, shaping identities, and resistance. Considering the specific politics of displacement of Iranian diasporic communities, I will ask the following questions: when, where, and how do Homan and the queer Iranian subjectivities it produces become complicit or oppositional? How do Iranian queers negotiate between the seemingly contradictory spaces of Iranian-ness and Queerness? Which subjectivities are readily represented by Homan, and why? I challenge the assumptions of transgression of queer and diaspora, in order to argue that while Homan has been oppositional to the heteronormativity of Iranian nationalism, it has also been complicit in maintaining gendered and racialized nationalist imaginaries by reconsolidating the grand narrative of fixity of Iranian culture in a pre-Islamic past. Furthermore, through homogenizing hamjensgara as the emblem of non-heterosexuality, Homan has drawn a rigid border between hetero- and homosexuality and has assumed fixed forms of essentialized sexuality without any possibility of change. Iranian hamjensgaras are produced as an elite class of modernized sovereign individuals, vis-à-vis the stereotypical traditional and homophobic Iranians, and through reification of binaries of “First World”/“Third World,” modern/traditional, and freedom/repression. At the end, I will argue that with the proliferation of discourses of sexuality in Iranian diaspora, and with the increasing movement and circulation of people and terms, new sexual identities emerge and boundaries of home/host, here/there, and First/Third Worlds are further blurred. However, the multilocality and hybridity of Iranian queer diaspora should be analyzed within the complex web of racial, classed, and gendered politics of movement.
Niloufar Talebi, The Translation Project
Translating the
21st Iranian
I created The Translation Project to increase the exposure of literature written in Persian to the English-speaking public. I will discuss the process of editing and translating an anthology of contemporary Iranian poetry in diaspora since 1979, and why it is essential to translate. Broadly speaking, Iranians are regarded in the U.S. either through disfavorable media representations or through their acclaimed classical poetry, both of which provide very little insight into the conditions of living and character of the contemporary Iranian, citizen of the world.
I will also
examine the role the act of translating and the reading of translations play
in enriching the experience of the U.S.-born generation, providing them with
the means to interact with a language and culture that is close, yet far
away from their grasp. Relevantly, I’ll speak about The Translation
Project’s long-term goal in encouraging, enabling and supporting the
translation of literature in Persian.
IAAB is proud to announce Shab-e Irooni, an evening of superb entertainment from members of the Iranian diaspora, on Saturday evening, April 23, 2005 at Dream Nightclub in Washington, DC.
The Iranian diaspora is rich with artistic talent, and Shab-e Irooni looks to highlight two young artists who have excelled in their fields. Widely acclaimed Iranian-American actor and stand-up comedian Maz Jobrani (http://www.mazjobrani.com), has been seen in an array of films and television series, including Law & Order, 24, The West Wing, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, and most recently in the new FOX sitcom, Life on a Stick. Jobrani will next be seen in the forthcoming film The Interpretor, starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, and IAAB is excited to have him perform his side-splitting, identity-probing stand-up comedy at Shab-i Irooni.
Award-winning spoken word artist/poet/activist Robert Karimi (http://www.kaoticgood.com) has used his Iranian-Guatamalan hybrid heritage as a point of departure for his art. Featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, Karimi mixes poetry, music, storytelling,visual art, and performance art to explore sampled consciousness -- an idea borrowed from hiphop where identity is negotiated -- that we sample, blend, fade in and fade out the various subcultures and experiences we come into contact to create self. Karimi's poetic and often humorous pieces reflect in a unique and passionate way what many in the Iranian diaspora experience.
Please
note that you must be 21+ to attend the party.
SHAB-E
IROONI featuring Maz Jobrani and Robert Karimi:
Doors open at 9:00pm, Event begins at 9:30pm
Dream Nightclub, Washington, DC
(www.welcometodream.com)
$5 Conference Attendees * $15 General Public
* Note: Conference attendees may
purchase their tickets at the conference on Saturday.