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, Belle interviews Dr. Annika Schmeding, Senior Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and a Lecturer at...
In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin reunite in New York to speak with Nahid Siamdoust, Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer and the Ehsan Yarshater Fellow...
In this episode, Ali interviews Dr. Manan Ahmed Asif, an Associate Professor in Columbia University’s History department, about his book, [The Loss of Hindustan,...