Woman, Life, Freedom
I had the honor to interview Golnar Gishnizjani (Doctoral student in Media Studies at the University of Turku) on the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and women’s rights and activism in Iran. Our conversation also covers the importance of solidarity, inside and outside of the academic world. Gishnizjani provides interesting insights to the background and context of the protests, and talks about the role of digital space in the revolutionary movement.
On September 16th 2022, Jina Masha Amini died in the hands of the Iranian “morality police”, accused for an improperly worn hijab. Since this event, people inside and outside of Iran have protested against the regime of the Islamic Republic and demanded for equal human rights and social justice. We publish this video to commemorate all the brave women and men of Iran who have given their lives in the demonstrations, and to encourage conversation and solidarity.
This video is related to my research project Origins of Racializing Thought at the University of Jyväskylä, funded by the Kone Foundation. Video production is by Houman Auriell.
For more information, background and context, here’s a brief list of useful internet sources:
Condense article on background and history by Nazanin Shahrokni, Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalisation at the London School of Economics and the author of Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press, 2020):
https://www.historytoday.com/
And another one by Niloofar Hooman, PhD candidate, Communication Studies and Media Arts, McMaster University:
https://brighterworld.
An interview with Mahnaz Parakand, a lawyer and activist from Iran:
An essay by Parnaz Foroutan, author of Home Is a Stranger:
Two informative and insightful podcasts:
“In Her Name: Women Rising, State Violence, and the Future of Iran”. A roundtable conversation moderated by Bassam Haddad (George Mason University) and Negar Razavi (Northwestern University):
On the role of social media and images in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement:
Finally, (not directly related to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement but to the responsibility of scholars to address social injustice), I recommend Patricia Hill Collins’ article on intellectual activism, related to her book On Intellectual Activism (Temple University Press, 2013):
https://journals.sagepub.com/