On the eve of Iran’s 1979 Revolution, the Iranian public sphere was transformed into places where information could be exchanged verbally, textually, and visually. The

It’s January 6th. Yet another snowy winter afternoon in Isfahan, but somehow curiously unlike the rest. A blanket of white fluff cloaks the medieval metropolis

There is a history that echoes and scratches within my blood. It tells stories of the suffering of my mother, my father, my sisters, my

In 2002, a group of Iranian-American students studying abroad made a wild and exaggerated observation: Iranians are everywhere. Of course, we didn’t mean on TV

Like the modern music of most cultures, a survey of the modern Iranian pop scene would produce a pretty standard variety of artists and genres.

I awoke yesterday morning to a barrage of excited, fearful, and shocked emails and messages demanding to understand why Iran had suddenly decided to ban

It is nearly impossible to read any article about Iranian women and not spend the entire time rolling your eyes. Historically, the Western media has

A friend recently shared two anecdotes from his trip to Iran with me that deal with race and skin color in the Iranian context. In

A new, exciting book on Iranian Jewry is making lower-tier headlines in Israel, the UK, France and even Turkey. Awareness of the work’s central figure,

Earlier this year, I begun a series highlighting the experiences of Afghan refugees in Iran. By focusing on cultural production, particularly film and literature, I

I am often confronted by the question “Are you Iranian or Persian, and what’s the difference?” and it has become something of a bonding ritual

My first memory of children’s programming on IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) goes back to the early 1980s when I myself was a little

As the standoff between Iran and the United States enters into a new, more aggressive phase of crippling sanctions punctuated by threats of war, the

June, 2011. I had spent the last week in the tropical moisture of Rasht, Iran. My hosts were Reza and his family. Reza, an Iranian,

Earlier this month, I completed a post discussing how works of literature from prominent Afghan writers voiced the conditions of millions of undocumented Afghan refugees

Iran is a culturally heterogeneous society that has been shaped by waves of migration over many centuries. While much of the domestic political and academic

We are all familiar with political art, whether it be war-time state-sponsored propaganda or the work of independent street artists produced during moments of social