Ordinary People, Extraordinary Agents of Change in Contemporary Iran
Saturday, 19 April 2025 | 13:30 to 15:00 EDT | Room 305, Senior Common Room, Founder College, Keele Campus, York University
In this panel, the recent socio-cultural events of the Middle East will be explored through an emphasis on Iran. Social, cultural, political movements of the region are analyzed and discussed.
Speakers:
- Professor Assef Bayat, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Professor Fereydoon Rahmani, York University
- Professor Khatereh Sheibani, York University
- Professor Mehraneh Ebrahimi, York University
This event is organized by Fereydoon Rahmani and Khatereh Sheibani (DLLL). The event is presented by the Department of Equity Studies and the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics. YCAR is pleased to co-sponsor this panel discussion.
Panelist Bios:
Asef Bayat, is Professor of Sociology, and Catherine & Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Illinois, he taught at the American University in Cairo for many years; and served as the director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) holding the Chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University, The Netherlands. His research areas range from social movements and social change to religion and public life, urban space and politics, and contemporary Middle East. His recent books include Being Young and Muslim: Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (ed. with Linda Herrera) (Oxford University Press, 2010); Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam (Oxford University Press, 2013); Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2013, 2nd edition), Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford University Press, 2017), Global Middle East: Into the 21st Century (ed. with Linda Herrera) (University of California Press, 2021), and Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring (Harvard University Press, 2021).
Fereydoon Rahmani is Undergraduate Program Director, and an associate professor of sociology at the Department of Equity Studies of York University in Toronto, Canada. He has been working at diverse universities and international research organizations in Europe as well as in the Middle East. He has taught in Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s universities worked as Chair of Sociology Department in Duhok University until 2014. Professor Rahmani has multiple publications including a monograph titled: Rooftop Societies: The Middle East Paradox (de Sitter Publications, 2020). Professor Rahmani is currently working on a book titled “Disappearance of Agency at the Age of War,” while is leading projects on the Quality of Life of refugees and internally displaced communities in Iraq and Syria.
Khatereh Sheibani is a scholar, author and curator of Middle Eastern and Iranian cinemas and cultures. She has designed and taught multiple courses on Middle Eastern and Iranian media and culture at York University. The Poetics of Iranian Cinema: Aesthetics, Modernity, and Film after the Revolution (2011, I.B. Tauris, UK) investigates the relation of Iranian cinema and Persian literature. She has edited two special issues of Iran Namag: A Quarterly of Iranian Studies, on Abbas Kiarostami (University of Toronto Press, 2018) and on Radio Iran (University of Toronto Press, 2024). Khatereh has written more than 20 articles on gender in the Middle East and Iran, modern Persian culture and literature, Iranian cinema and Middle Eastern cinemas in anthologies, books, and journals such as Iranian Studies and Canadian Journal of Film Studies. She has written two novels in Persian titled Hotel Iran (in press) and Blue Bird Café (Toronto 2022, reprinted 2023 & 2024).
Mehraneh Ebrahimi is Associate Professor in the Department of English at York University, and the author of Women, Art, and Literature in the Iranian Diaspora (Syracuse University Press, 2019). Her second monograph, titled “Refugee Narratives: Dignity, Agency, & Voice in Iranian Exilic Life Writing,” is currently under review. Her research straddles the fertile interstice between fine art, politics, and literature. She is the recipient of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Explore and York University research grants and was placed on Western University’s teaching Honour Roll twice for excellence in undergraduate teaching.
