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, Rustin speaks with Leyli Gafarova, an independent filmmaker and the co-creator of Salaam Cinema, a community-driven independent cinema space showcasing non-commercial,...
In this episode, Belle interviews Dr. Pouya Alimagham, a Lecturer at MIT, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative,...
In this episode, Rustin interviews Golbarg Rekabtalaei, an Assistant Professor of History at Seton Hall University. She is the author of [Iranian Cosmopolitanism: A...