Happy Nowruz/Nawriz/Navruz/Novruz/Newroz everyone! Nowruz is an ancient festival marking the arrival of Spring, celebrated across the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, South Asia, and the Balkans. Dating back at least 3,000 years, Nowruz is a celebration of rebirth and renewal, of the end of winter and the flowering of the Earth that warm weather brings. In the Iranian calendar, this Nowruz marks the beginning of the year 1398. In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin talk reflect on the first year since Ajam's successful kickstarter, which has given the project enough funds to pay writers and launch new projects. They talk about what is to come in the new year, including a new film project and the return of the mixtapes series. The conversation then moved to the topic of Nowruz and how it is celebrated, before revisiting Ajam editor Beeta Baghoolizadeh's [2012 piece on Haji Firuz and race in Iran](https://ajammc.com/2012/06/20/the-afro-iranian-community-beyond-haji-firuz-blackface-slavery-bandari-music/). ...
In this episode, Teren Sevea, an Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, interviews Suvir Kaul, the A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kaul is the the author of the book: [Of Gardens and Graves: Essays on Kashmir](https://www.english.upenn.edu/publications/2015/suvir-kaul/gardens-and-graves), published by Duke University Press in 2017. Dr. Sevea and Dr. Kaul open the episode with a discussion about the political history of Kashmir's division and occupation, as well as how India's BJP-majority government has recently revoked Jammu and Kashmir's special status, dramatically affecting the everyday lives of people in the region. They then explore the role of Kashmiri poetry as a medium for understanding the decades-long occupation, as well as the resistance to it. Finally, the episode closes with a reading of "A Pastoral," a poem written by the late Srinagar-born poet Agha Shahid 'Ali (1949-2001) in dedication to Dr. Kaul. ...
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. ...
