Essential Readings on the 2022 Uprising in Iran

Essential Readings on the 2022 Uprising in Iran

Essential Readings on the 2022 Uprising in Iran

By : Iran Page Editors

[The Essential Readings series is curated by the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) team at the Arab Studies Institute. MESPI invites scholars to contribute to our Essential Readings modules by submitting an “Essential Readings” list on a topic/theme pertinent to their research/specialization in Middle East studies. Authors are asked to keep the selection relatively short while providing as much representation/diversity as possible. This difficult task may ultimately leave out numerous works which merit inclusion from different vantage points. Each topic may eventually be addressed by more than one author. Due to the timely nature of this installment, it takes a different form from our other Essential Readings. Articles such as this will appear permanently on www.MESPI.org and www.Jadaliyya.com. Email us at info@MESPI.org for any inquiries.]

Taking our lead from the Kurdish slogan “women, life, freedom” and from the feminist origins of the current uprising in Iran, we offer these readings to encourage critical engagement and debate within a transnational context. This unprecedented feminist revolutionary movement has challenged many existing paradigms for understanding Iranian society, the politics of dissent, and feminist practices of solidarity. We recognize that no “essential readings” list can ever fully represent the diversity of views in Iran or in the Iranian diaspora, however, we believe that each of our selections offers a significant contribution toward a deeper understanding of this historic moment. 

Short Commentary

  1. Figuring a Women’s Revolution: Bodies Interacting with their Images 
    by “L”
  2. Tomorrow Was Shahrivar 1401: Notes on the Iranian Uprisings
    by Iman Ganji and Jose Rosales
  3. I’ve Protested for Women’s Rights in Iran Since 1979: This Movement is Different
    by Zan Irani
  4. Why is Iran’s Regime Afraid of this Song?
    by Nahid Siamdoust
  5. Iran’s New Revolutionary Figure is Feminist
    by Catherine Sameh
  6. A New Iran had been Born: A Global Iran
    by Asef Bayat
  7. Situating Iran within Inter-Elite Class Politics in Iran
    by Ali Terrenoire
  8.  “Woman, Life, Freedom”: Iran’s Protests Are A Rebellion for Bodily Autonomy
    by Narges Bajoghli
  9. “Woman, Life, Freedom” and the Progressive Academe
    by Maryam Alemzadeh
  10. How Iran’s Hijab Protest Movement Became So Powerful
    by Fatemeh Shams
  11. How Would We Know If We Were Witnessing a Revolution in Iran?
    by Charles Kurzman

Histories of Feminism in Iran and Iranian Diaspora


Early and Mid-Twentieth Century Women’s Movements

Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Veiled Discourse-Unveiled Bodies.” Feminist Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, 1993, 487–518.

1979 Revolutionary Era

Haideh Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran: Women’s Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement (London: Macmillan Press LTD, 1996).

Minoo Moallem, Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

Negar Mottahedeh, Whisper Tapes: Kate Millet in Iran (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019).

Everyday Feminisms and Women’s Rights in the Post-Revolutionary Period

Homa Hoodfar, The Women’s Movement in Iran: Women at the Crossroads of Secularization and Islamization (Grabels Cadex: Women Living Under Muslim Laws, 1999).

Arzoo Osanloo, The Politics of Women’s Rights in Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

Nazanin Shahrokhni, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020). 

Shirin Saeidi, Women and the Islamic Republic: How Gendered Citizenship Conditions the Iranian State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Claudia Yaghoobi, “Over 40 Years of Resisting the Compulsory Veiling: Relating Literary Narratives to Text-Based Protests to Cyberactivism,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies vol. 17, no. 2, July 2021, 220-239. 

“The Political Economy of the Green Movement: Contestation and Political Mobilization in Iran” by Fariba Adelkhah

Transnational and Diasporic Feminist Analysis 

Catherine Z. Sameh, Axis of Hope: Iranian Women’s Rights Activism across Borders (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019). 

Sima Shakhsari, Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020).

Manijeh Moradian, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022). 

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Education in the Time of Virality

Widespread access to the internet has facilitated means of acquiring news and information at rates unseen in earlier eras. As individuals, we have the ability to post and spread political information, social commentary, and other thoughts at will. This has caused an information overload for users of social networking sites. In a fight for views, reposts, and clicks, creators, both corporate and not, have been forced to develop new tactics to inform their audiences. This response to a new mode of information consumption also forces a reconsideration of how we understand knowledge production. Much of the information put forth into the world is absorbed passively, such as through characters’ storylines in books, films, and television - and this information accumulates over a lifetime. What, then, happens when knowledge is actively consumed (as is done when reading, watching, or listening to news stories), but the manner through which the information is presented still conforms to the brevity generally associated with more passive knowledge intake?

Pew Research estimates that over 70% of Americans use their phone to read the news. This is nearly a 25% increase since 2013. The constant barrage of advertisements in online articles does not make consuming news easy to do on a phone, thereby forcing media outlets and their competitors to change and adopt new tactics. Applications such as Flipboard have tried to mitigate these frustrations by simply providing the full article without the ads on their own platform, but many people still turn to sources like The Skimm. In attempting to distill a day’s worth of news coverage on domestic affairs, foreign affairs, pop culture, and sports into a few quips, undeniably both texture and nuance are lost. To compete with these services, CNN, the New York Times, and other mainstream news sources are doing the same and producing articles that give the, “Top 5 News Moments to Start Your Day,” or a, “Daily Brief.” Of course, looking at the language differences between the New York Times daily summary versus The Skimm’s, one can tell which is a more comprehensive news source. Even so, slashing the word count still takes a toll on clearly informing the public. The question then becomes, after quickly skimming through these summaries, are people doing more readings to cover what was lost? Or has “the brief” become the new standard for knowledge production and awareness?

It is more than likely that a significant portion of The Skimm’s subscribers do go on to read the full article linked in the email, but the growing popularity of similarly quick and fast news sources has had an impact on how much information viewers and readers actually understand. Between 2011 and 2014, The Skimm was founded, along with AJ+, Now This, Upworthy, and BuzzFeed News’ more serious journalism section. Undeniably, all of these sources produce and publish very important information, and make this information accessible to a larger audience. However, their production and marketing strategies hinge upon condensing very nuanced topics into videos that are, on average, only seven minutes long, as well as optimizing their materials for social media audiences. Now, it is ridiculous to expect highly textured and complicated issues to be thoroughly represented in these videos or posts. Even research based texts do not touch upon all of the complexities of a topic. The problems arise when looking at how viewers perceive themselves and their level of knowledge after actively searching out the products of, for example, AJ+ and Buzzfeed, for information. Carefully refining their materials to fit the shortened attention span of people scrolling through Facebook, social media news organizations have found their niche audience. Their products provide a simple way to deliver information to those who want gather knowledge on the “hot topics of today,” but do not what to do the leg work to be truly informed. These videos are spread throughout Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms in a manner that says, “Watch this, and you will know what is going on in the world.”

Understanding how information is being pushed out into the world is almost as important as the content of the information. None of these outlets claim to provide comprehensive knowledge, but in being popular sites for information, the question becomes: do they have a responsibility to encourage their viewers to continue to inform themselves about these issues? Having a well-informed society is phenomenal, but if in informing society we are also forever altering how we consume knowledge to favor brevity over nuance, what consequences could come with this change? We must ensure that the consumption of these videos does not become a license for people to see themselves as truly informed and thus appropriate for them to take the microphones at protests and speak over those who have a solid and textured understanding of the issues. Information content is incredibly important, as is spreading knowledge, and AJ+, Now This, and the like have become important role models in showing how issues should be accessible to everyone and not clouted in jargon. But we must simultaneously consider the unintended side effects that these styles of videos have on knowledge production. Ultimately, it is a mutual effort. Just as producers must be watchful of their content and method of dissemination, we as consumers must be mindful of how we digest and understand the news we take in.


[This article was published originally Tadween`s Al-Diwan blog by Diwan`s editor, Mekarem Eljamal.]