Assist Prof in Media & Middle East Stds
@UTAustin
📚 “Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran" 🎶 Former Iran/Middle East journalist 🤓
Are students no longer permitted to peacefully protest? Why do we even have these institutions of higher learning if we won’t let students speak their conscience & protest? UT Austin brought out everything but the kitchen sink to make sure the anti-war encampment doesn’t happen1/
Pretty incredible
#corona
messaging on Azadi Tower in
#Tehran
. Notice how US flag is excluded from the community of humankind (tho even Saudi is included) based on the verses in Sa’di’s poem: “If you have no sympathy for human pain / The name of human you cannot retain”
16-year-old Arshia Emamgholizadeh committed suicide 2 days after being released. He was detained for tipping off a cleric’s turban, a recent form of protest. His mother cries in Azeri: What did they do to you in prison, my child? What did they do to you?
#MahsaAmini
That was state riot police, there was regular police, state troopers, horses, and they even booked the lawn mower to keep students off South Lawn! All to keep students from protesting against a war!
Yessss. My brother Mohammad Reza wins the
@macfound
“genius” award for his groundbreaking work on antibiotics
@Princeton
. We are all so proud ❤️🥳
Powerful post by filmmaker
#ManiHaghighi
telling Iran’s culture minister who urged artists to get back to work “we’re too busy mourning the people you imprison, wound & kill to dance for you”
#Mahsa_Amini
How is this possible? Been longing for
#Persian
#icecream
all my life outside Iran & now the first batch I made is some of the best I’ve ever tasted (short of Tajrish Akbar Mashti). And it took like 20 mins to make 😳 If you’re looking for me, my head’s in the freezer - recipe 👇🏼
Iranian-Kurdish ulama issue statement: “[…] not only are none of the protesters warring with God and his Prophet, they are acting on their religious, humane & legal obligation to fight injustice […]. Hence, the charge of ‘muharebe’ (warring with God) itself is against the law.”
Students have been peaceful, the chants are “peaceful protest is a right” and “hey hey ho ho the occupation’s got to go” & “free Palestine” - troopers taking down tents & pushing students off the lawn, arresting students who chant on front lines
Excited to start
@UTAustin
@LiberalArtsUT
as Assist Prof in Middle East & Media Studies
@utaustinmes
this Fall! And doubly excited to be part of a research cluster in Global Internet & Disinformation. Go Hook’em!
Nahid Siamdoust (
@nahid8
) comes to
@utaustinmes
as an assistant professor. Siamdoust is an anthropologist and cultural historian whose work focuses primarily on the intersection of politics, cultural production, media and gender in Iran and the wider Middle East.
Happy
#IWD2018
- here women on Tehran subway sing a feminist song that calls for a new reality based on equality... at the end they congratulate the other women for their struggles
Excellent interview w/ Hamas expert Tareq Baconi: “…we need to understand that colonial violence instills dehumanization both in the oppressor and in the oppressed.”
New Interview: I talked to Tareq Baconi, an expert on Hamas, about what the group hoped to accomplish, why Israeli government policy toward Hamas has changed over the years, & how to understand the sheer scale of the violence & cruelty of recent days.
Iranian rapper
#Hichkas
has new track out & man it’s powerful “they’ve caged the whole country & say no one is a prisoner here; they’ve stripped everyone & ask why are your clothes not Islamic” Dastasho Mosht Karde by Mahdyar
#np
on
#SoundCloud
#Iran
state TV - for long starved of “authentic” music - is now replaying revolutionary songs of 40 yrs ago in a way that doesn’t feel off, accompanied by images of massive crowds flooding Iranian streets, not unlike 40 yrs ago
#SoleimaniAssassination
How we got to this point - my piece on the recent
#Iran
protests, with historical & cultural context: Woman, Life, Liberty: A Slogan One Hundred Years in the Making - New Lines Magazine
#مهسا_امینی
#KianPirfalak
, the 9-year-old who was killed by Islamic Republic security forces in the protests, the boy who began his science experiment with “In the name of the God of Rainbows” recites the Quranic verse “God does not love oppressors” 💔🖤
#Mahsa_Amini
#AylarHaghi
the 23-year-old medical student who was killed by security forces in
#Iran
in November. One video shows her dancing, another her mother’s grieving. The people’s struggle is literally one for life over death, in real & metaphorical ways.
#Mahsa_Amini
EPISODE 18. We speak to
@nahid8
about the politics of music in Iran after the 1979 revolution, the Iran-Iraq war era, the post-war era of pop, political songs inspired by the 2009 green movement, and today's musicians in diaspora - in memory of
#Shajarian
.
We launched the WLF podcast series in honor of
#InternationalWomensDay
, tapping into our speakers’ expertise & “archiving” all the big & small details of an unfolding historical moment in
#Iran
. Tune in!
Ostad
#Shajarian
’s son singing for one of Iran’s all-time most beloved artists as his body is being readied to leave the hospital to “go where they are awaiting you” as Homayoun sings💔
Some of Iran’s most famous musicians onboard a plane to perform in Saudi at
#Tantora
Festival. Won’t lie - wish I could be there... though timing is tasteless right now when everyone is suffering in
#Iran
.
Truly mind boggling
@Reuters
headline: so US forces in the “Persian” Gulf are within Iran’s reach?!? No way!! And that is worded as an Iranian threat... what warmongering journalism!
#shame
#NoWarOnIran
This is a good thread on how the assassination went down - 12 assassins! Just imagine what hell would break loose if Iran had assassinated top Israeli or US nuke scientist...
@naghmehs
@sasanianshah
@NewYorker
I hear the
@NewYorker
⬇️ has now belatedly added the VOA bit tho still offering justification. Her program is all activism so the phrase in parentheses doesn’t make sense.
US sanctions have caused Iranians untold misery - and achieved nothing the American public needs to read more pieces like this by
@NegarMortazavi
@SinaToossi
#Ramesh
-one of Shah era Iran’s most beautiful & popular voices died in exile. When she left Iran in 1979 she stopped singing for 15 yrs, “in solidarity with all the women whose voices are banned” she had said.
Khomeini boy band track got a lot of people laughing & posting vomit memes. Thanks
@maasalan
. Sorry guys, but this wasn’t meant for y’all English speakers in the West. I’ll explain:
Good talking again to
@democracynow
the first time I spoke w the great Amy Goodman was from Iran on the 2009 Uprising, it’s one the top news shows out there
Kurdish leaders have spoken up against the Iranain government's assaults on protesters, says Nahid Siamdoust (
@Nahid8
), assistant professor in Middle East and media studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Folks
@MESA_1966
join us for a conversation on “Iran’s Revolution turns 40” to discuss what this has meant for Iran & Iranians in various fields, social policy, education, culture & media etc. with this fabulous groups of scholars
#MESA2019
Saturday 8:30
Chief creative jobs like music composer, orchestra conductor & film director have been done for too long by mostly men, incl in the West, but seriously, Iranian women are at the forefront of changing that, in film & music alike
Here
@ForeignAffairs
I write about the silence of music in the recent
#IranProtests
. With Soleimani’s assassination that silence is only likely to grow. Silence Falls on Iran’s Protest Movement in the Absence of Revolutionary Music
Just wow. Iranian state TV’s recipe for permissible singing by women: clump a whole lot of them together, cover them in most conservative chadors & hav’em sing about the dangers of a free social media 👏🏼👏🏼 & those judges trying to keep a straight face 😂
So many hearts are broken over the death of Iran’s Asiatic
#cheetah
#Pirooz
whose name meant Victory & who symbolized Iranians’ hope for a better future in their battle for a politics of life over death. RIP beautiful cheetah, son of Iran. The hope you sowed lives on. #پیروز
@sasanianshah
@naghmehs
@NewYorker
Well, agreed & I would never argue she didn’t contribute. But the hubris is astounding, as is the New Yorker’s imperialist presentation of a lone woman leading the movement in Iran from an FBI safe house. It’s disrespect for the people who are risking their lives on the streets.
Seeing Iranians who proclaim to champion the country’s oppressed population against its “occupier” regime now celebrate Israel’s illegal siege and indiscriminate killing of Palestinians with the military & financial might of the world makes me ashamed & 🤮🤮
So lame!!
@TIME
#personoftheyear
What about the healthcare workers? Delivery, grocery people & all the working class & black & brown people who suffered the most & yet ran the country while the rest of us were hiding in our homes? How about
#BlackLivesMatter
? Come on!
Such a moving clip of people gathering to sing Ostad
#Shajarian
’s most famous intonation - Bird of Dawn - in a much lower sadder register.
#Shajarian
has been the voice of the people, a role he chose very consciously as an artist.
Iran authorities banned maestro
#Shajarian
inside the country since 2009 when he supported
#IranProtests
; & after 11y of official ban on him, ppl gather in front of the hospital in Tehran where he's receiving trtment & sang out one of his most famous songs
2/recipe: beat 1 pint heavy whipping cream for a long time til firm, pour in 14oz condensed milk, beat more, add 2-3 tbsp rose water, 1 tbsp vanilla extract, 3-4 tbsp saffron water, as much pistachios as you want - freeze for 8 hrs
Another teenager
#AbbasMansouri
committed suicide after being released from prison. The 19-year-old was detained for handing out sweets with “woman, life, freedom” stickers.
#Mahsa_Amini
What a sad day for America that an entitled drunkard
#bully
(who I believe committed the heinous assault on
@DrBlaseyFord
) shall serve on the
#SupremeCourt
and decide some of the most important political directions of this country for decades to come
Warmonger bullshitter paid by Netanyahu. She references a Twitter poll she conducted among her constituents (who like her have been dying for years to destroy Iran) as proof that Iranians want to be bombed by Ezraeel!! Just disgusting 💩
"That's the most preposterous thing I have ever heard in my life!"
Piers Morgan's latest debate on Iran's attack on Israel with Cenk Uygur, Emily Schrader and Joe Walsh is now live 👇
📺
@cenkuygur
|
@emilykschrader
|
@piersmorgan
|
@WalshFreedom
Please take a moment to sign this petition
#againstsanctions
on
#Iran
. Sanctions will only harm everyday people who need medicines and other goods... don’t let the US do to Iran what it did to Iraq under Saddam, killing half a million Iraqi children...
Happy Nowruz 💐 Many believe what the Iranian diva Hayedeh really died of - soon after the Iran-Iraq war - was the heartache of exile. Today Iranians are comparing our precarious moment to that of the war... it’s an uncanny moment to laser Hayedeh back to remind us of that pain.
Nahid Siamdoust
@nahid8
on Female Vocalists, Social Media, & Cultural Policy in Islamic Iran
This Thursday (11/12) at 3PM ET
Women's Studies in Religion Program (WSRP) |
@HarvardDivinity
Register here:
On Iranian social media some posts are circulating in which
#GeorgeFloyd
is presented as a shahid, a martyr, even as the ultimate shahid, Imam Hussein. This is because Iran’s leaders have decried treatment of black people in US. But the mockery of these posts betrays
#racism
.
This is the moment when the world powers need to step in and say enough is enough. End the occupation. There won’t be peace otherwise. Let’s stop this bloodshed. Let’s solve this problem. Instead they empower Israel to retaliate indiscriminately. My 💔 for all the innocent.
On the eve of the 40th anniversary of Iran’s 1979 revolution take a listen 🎧 to this and other
@AjamMC
podcasts on groundbreaking works in Iranian Studies 🇮🇷📚📝
An incredibly searing new piece by
@MohsenNamjoo
commemorating the martyrs of Iran’s November protests, and lauding the day when their blood will be redeemed & the joy of their spirits will pour down on us in spring showers 😔💔 #آبان_خونین
Excited & honored to be in this collection of essays on Woman, Life, Freedom in
@culanth
compiled by Milad Odabaei, where I discuss the radical trajectory of Rap-e Farsi:
Learned a couple things visiting Oklahoma for first time:
#1
& most importantly: OU has a fab program in Iranian Stds
@oucis
#2
❤️ Khayyam statue
#3
#BradPitt
is from Oklahoma
#3
O City is NOT the biggest US city by landmass (driver said, that’s Sitka Alaska)
Sorry to read this Arash. It draws on fringe aspects of the protest movement to delegitimize it all while there are still students locked up & being charged for standing up against the senseless murder & starvation of a people… this while their own leaders have failed them.
I wrote about why it was wrong to send the police on students and as faculty we must protect them and their rights — but also why we shouldn’t idealize them or their politics — or romanticize about their predecessors in the Sixties
Keep your dirty hands off
#Iran
@SecPompeo
& the bloody hands of MKO cult leader Maryam Rajavi too. Iranians are not dying on the streets to have another Islamic-fascist regime replace the current one. Just take your f*cking self out of this picture. It’s none of your biz
Really down w/ every word of
@mehdirhasan
’s talk
@YaleMSA
@YaleCMES
banquet; let’s be
#crediblemessengers
of justice spec. @ our times when truth & reality r disfigured as relative; don’t b tribal but speak for the good of humanity...if ur not an activist now, then what are you?
I couldn’t have asked for two speakers more knowledgeable & eloquent on economic matters that are central to understanding Iran today… both did a great job clarifying misunderstood matters & shattering misconceptions… listen to find out which!!
Grateful to
@nahid8
for having me on her podcast for a ranging conversation on Iran's economy alongside Djavad Salehi-Isfahani.
We discussed how economic conditions have a bearing on Iran's political situation, including on the
#WomanLifeFreedom
movement.
Today marks the 5th anniversary of Vida Movahed's courageous public stand against the compulsory hijab in Iran.
It triggered the “Girls of Revolution Street” campaign as Iranian women took off their headscarves in public and waved them on sticks.
#Masha_Amini
#مهسا_امینی
Typical Ahmadinejad fashion. All reporters had a hard time nailing him
@GEsfandiari
does as good a job as it gets but if this dude is one thing it’s master of evasion. I remember asking him about women in his cabinet & he said something like women being the crown on his head 😳
So cruel & unjust. Iran executed the first protestor today. Young & full of life, 23-year old
#MohsenShekari
. His family was told to keep silent if they wanted him back. He was killed without their knowledge
#MahsaAmini
Let’s raise our voices for next in line like rapper
#Yasin
Devastating! The moment the family of
#MohsenShekari
learned about his execution this morning.They didn’t expect this. It took less than just 75 days from the arrest to his execution. Travesty of Justice.
#MahsaAmini
#مهسا_امینی #محسن_شکاری
#IranRevolution
3/I also added bits of unsweetened frozen cream like Akbar Mashti but that takes a little more dedication - freeze thin layer of heavy whipping cream in ziplock, break into small pieces & fold into ice cream halfway through freezing
AMERICANS, MEET THE IRANIANS. Coming Monday and Tuesday evening, on
@Frontlinepbs
, I will show you Iran in a way never seen before. Get to know the people living beyond the headlines, as I guide you through one of the most controversial countries in the world. 👇👀
#sound
on
1) It was meant for the millions (yes) of Khomeini fans in the Global South, from South & Central Asia to Africa and China - hence English & you think those people pick up on the accent and strange Persian translations like “forehead of time”?
This lucid & brave Amir Kabir
#student
manifesto out of
#Iran
last week shines the path forward - read the translation here; as
@g_nar
says they “protest the corruption & brutality of their own gov’t as well as US imperialism”
Popular Music & Society in Iran conference Jan 26-27 @ Yale, w/ 6 talk panels & 3 musician panels, featuring among them Iran's 1st female Hip Hop artist Salome MC & Mohsen Namjoo
Symposium explores impact of popular music on Iranian society
Join me for a new episode of WLF, as I discuss with
@arash_tehran
“What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom,” his great new book about the 2022 uprising. We talk about all that led to that historic moment & where we are today.
Wow sort of knew this but just stunned by this thread (US made Persian dolls sanctioned by
@Etsy
???) - don’t we have good Iranian-American lawyers to bring a suit against identity discrimination?
Hi
@PayPal
, here's how I interpret this:
Do not say Iran. It is a bad word. Any reference to your Iranian culture and heritage is bad, so please censor your identity so your payment can go through. Sorry, we don't have a moral compass of our own.
Beautiful rendition of Ostad Shajarian's "Shabnavard" by virtuosa singer
@MalihehMoradi
first sung for Iran's 1979 revolution. Where Shajarian sang about brother, she sings "because sister is an adolescent." Look @ the schoolgirls rising up
#مهسا_امینی