While Kamyar is traveling for work, Rustin is joined by guest co-host Yan Matusevich in Tbilisi, Georgia. Yan is a Vienna-based researcher and journalist focusing on issues of migration in the post-Soviet space. He is also the host of the [ZamZaman](https://cba.fro.at/series/zamzaman) podcast, which showcases music from Eastern Europe and Eurasia at large. Yan and Rustin talk to Mariana Irby, a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on nationalism, gender, and post-socialism in Tajikistan and Tajik migrant communities in Russia. She is also the author of a recent Ajam article, ["Dressing the Nation: Tajikistan’s Hijab Ban and the Politics of Fashion in Post-Soviet Central Asia" ](https://ajammc.com/2018/09/30/national-islamic-fashion-tajikistan/). In this episode, Mariana delves deeper into the interplay between gender, articulations of nationhood, and the Tajik labor economy. Yan closes out the episode with a track from the ZamZaman archive: ["Dilro Bubin," Makhfirat Hamroqulova & Gulshan (Tajikistan, 1985) ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT0122kn6fQ&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3m8n3d2oNh27w5S61YH8EZOxjmndOPHPRgLMv-oUht08D4erh6wLPOn_8) Related Readings: Madeleine Reeves, "[Clean fake:Authenticating documents and persons in migrant Moscow"](http://http://russianmodernisation.fi/material/living-with-risk/Further_readings_Aitamurto2.pdf) Nicholas Muller, ["Russia: New migrant registration rules threaten tenuous livelihoods"](https://eurasianet.org/russia-new-migrant-registration-rules-threaten-tenuous-livelihoods) ...
In this episode, Rustin speaks with Lindsey Stephenson, who is currently conducting postgraduate research at Princeton University, and the new host of Ajam's Indian Ocean podcast series. The Indian Ocean series explores topics related to the Islamo-Arabic and Persianate world from the perspective of the Indian Ocean littoral and the people who traversed its waters. These conversations aim to rethink narratives of history and culture, which have been traditionally boxed in by land-based territorial demarcations and regional studies frameworks. This series invites listeners to imagine the complex interconnectedness of life from East Africa to Southeast Asia and beyond. In the first Indian Ocean series episode, Dr. Stephenson discusses her research on pre-oil mobility and modernity in the Persian Gulf, as well as its connections to Indian Ocean at large. While many people think that modernity came to the Gulf when oil was discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century, Lindsey demonstrates that global markets, labor demands, and capital from the date and pearling industries led to massive changes in the social, political, and legal spheres of the Persian Gulf several decades earlier. ...
In this episode, Rustin is joined by Neda Maghbouleh, Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Toronto. She is the author of [The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race (Stanford University Press, 2017).](https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24756) Neda is a long-time friend of Ajam and an early guest of the first iteration of the Ajam podcast back in 2014. Since our first conversation, she has published her book, which explores the history of ethnic and racial classification in the United States and how Iranians and other Middle Eastern Americans have moved across the color line from "white" to "brown." After discussing the major themes and reception of her book, Dr. Maghbouleh talks about her latest project focusing on the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Canada since 2015. The five-year study follows newcomer mothers and their teenage children as they adjust to their new environment and deal with a wide variety of stressors Rustin closes out the episode with "Chiftetelli," a 1949 Armenian song by the Nore Ike Orchestra. ...
