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, Kamyar and Rustin reunite in New York to speak with Nahid Siamdoust, Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer and the Ehsan Yarshater Fellow at Yale University. She is the author of [Soundtrack of the Revolution: the Politics of Music in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2017) ](https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24949) Nahid gives an overview of the role of music in Iran’s social and political movements throughout the 20th century, before discussing how music became one of the first causalities of the Islamic Republic before it was slowly reintroduced, albeit with many restrictions on what can be played and whom can perform. From Persian classical music, to underground rock, hip-hop, and pop, Dr. Siamdoust shows how music continues to be a central site of negotiation and struggle between ideologues, bureaucrats, and musicians in Iran. In addition to the music included throughout the interview, Nahid has curated a Soundcloud playlist, [The 10 Songs That Define Modern Iran](https://soundcloud.com/nahid-siamdoust/10-songs-that-define-modern-iran). ...
In this episode, Rustin is joined by Manijeh Nasrabadi, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Neither Washington, Nor Tehran: Iranian Internationalism in the United States (Duke University Press, 2020). Manijeh speaks about her research on the Iranian Students Association, which was founded in 1952 by the Iranian Embassy and the CIA to support and monitor Iranian students studying at American universities. Over the course of the 1960s, leftist students maneuvered to take control of the leadership positions of the ISA, and gradually transformed the organization into a radical Anti-Shah opposition group. Within the Cold War context, members of the ISA found themselves entrenched in the anti-war, anti-imperialist, and civil rights movements of the day. Utilizing first-person interviews and archival work, Dr. Nasrabadi not only traces these intersections, but she also highlights how ISA members recall their hopes for the 1979 Iranian Revolution and their disappointments in its aftermath. Rustin closes out the episode with “[Lalai](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfZ2QkDY0ng),” a political song performed by the Confederation of Iranian Students Choir in Munich in 1969. ...
