Dr. Narges Bajoghli: Unsilenced: Women’s Protests in Iran
The streets of Iran have been filled with chants of “Women! Life! Freedom!” as the nation experiences a vast social uprising against its political leadership led by women and girls.
Sparked by the September 16th killing of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police” for failing to comply with Islamic dress codes, the movement has at its heart an insistence that there is no such thing as political freedom without bodily autonomy. It has spread throughout Iran—prompting a government crackdown that has killed hundreds—and given rise to new visions for political futures both in Iran and globally.
Dr. Narges Bajoghli, an award-winning political anthropologist, writer, and professor whose past research on Iran has given her unprecedented access to those in power as well as to the social movements struggling against the state, shares her insights into what these uprisings mean for Iran and the rest of the world.
Dr. Bajoghli discusses the women and girls at the forefront of this movement, their refusal to comply with laws and systems that oppress them, and the prospects of these struggles to bring about substantive change despite government efforts to squelch dissent.
Dr. Narges Bajoghli is a political anthropologist, media anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker, whose research lies at the intersections of media, power, and resistance in Iran and the United States. nargesbajoghli.com
A lecture by Dr. Narges Bajoghli, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, co-director of the school’s Rethinking Iran Initiative, and author of Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic.