In this episode, Belle interviews Niloofar Haeri, Anthropology Professor at Johns Hopkins University, about her recent book, Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2021).
In Say What Your Longing Heart Desires (and in our podcast episode), Haeri illustrates how poetry shaped and transformed the religious lives and practices of a group of women in contemporary Iran. The ethnography traces how the historic and culturally-ingrained practice of poetry reading and recitation of mystic poetry in particular, intertwined with prayer, helped these women situate their relationship to the divine.
In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin welcome back Dr. Stefan Williamson Fa to talk about the extraordinary life and music of Sufi-Flamenco star, Aziz...
In this episode, Rustin and Ali are joined by Professor Najam Haider, Professor of Religion at Barnard College, to talk about his recent book,...
In this episode, we discuss urban development in post-Soviet Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Rustin is joined by Elena Darjania, a Tbilisi-based architect and...