91泡芙

MEICON Book Talk: Kurdish Women through History, Culture, and Resistance with Dr. Shahrzad Mojab

March 15
SFU Harbour Centre

91泡芙 the Event:

鈥� is a study of the lives and struggles of Kurdish women in the past while also envisioning the social, cultural, and sexual transformation of gender relations for a future that is upon us. An interdisciplinary study of, by, and with Kurdish women, this anthology offers a rejuvenated radical analysis of transnational feminism by focusing on the interrelations between social forces and structures that constitute the totality of gender relations in Kurdish society at local, regional, and global levels. Stories of daily encounters of women鈥檚 bodies and sexualities with the state, patriarchal relations, religion, borders, and refugee camps is centered in some of the analyses; others explore the voices, images, and writings of women in cinema, songs, poems, folktales, and memoirs. The collective feminist ethos of the book is directed towards overcoming the absences and omissions of Kurdish gender relations in Kurdish Studies and in the study of women and gender relations in the Middle East and North Africa.鈥�

91泡芙 the Speakers:

Shahrzad Mojab (https://discover.research.utoronto.ca/8930-shahrzad-mojab) scholar, teacher, and activist, is internationally known for her work on the impact of war, displacement, and violence on women鈥檚 work, learning and education. She is Professor Emerita of Education and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the former Director of Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity and the Women and Gender Institute, University of Toronto.

Shahrzad鈥檚 research and teaching focus on the theorization of Marxism and feminism; intersectionality; capitalist imperialist patriarchy; and the revolts of women, students and nationalities in the Middle East and North Africa. She has published extensively on these topics, and they have mostly been translated into Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, French, Swedish, and German. Recent examples include:

Mojab, Shahrzad (2022). 鈥淲omen and Education in the Middle East and North Africa.鈥� In George Noblit (Ed.). Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.ORE_EDU-01544.R1.

Mojab, Shahrzad (2022). 鈥淲omen and revolution in the Middle East,鈥� in Suad Joseph and Zeina Zaatari (eds). Handbook on Women in the Middle East. New York: Routledge, pp. 197-211.

Mojab, Shahrzad (2021). 鈥淭he universalities and particularities of racialized capitalist violence,鈥� in Silvia Federici, Liz Mason-Deese, and Susana Draper (eds.). Feminicide and Global Accumulation Frontline Struggles to Resist the Violence of Patriarchy and Capitalism. Brooklyn, NY: Common Notions, pp. 145-153.

Carpenter, Sara and Shahrzad Mojab (2021). 鈥淕ender, Race, and Class: Marxist Feminism and Education,鈥� in Alpesh Maisuria (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education. Boston: BRILL, pp. 453-466.

Her recent books include: Kurdish Women Through History, Culture, and Resistance (edited, 2024), Marxism and Migration (co-edited with Genevie Ritchie and Sara Carpenter, 2022); Women of Kurdistan: A Historical and Bibliographical Study (co-authored with Amir Hassanpour, 2021); Revolutionary Learning: Marxism, Feminism and Knowledge (co-authored with Sara Carpenter, 2017); Youth as/in Crisis: Young People, Public Policy, and the Politics of Learning (co-edited with Sara Carpenter, 2017); Marxism and Feminism (editor, 2015); Educating from Marx: Race, Gender and Learning (co-edited with Sara Carpenter, 2012); Women, War, Violence, and Learning (editor, 2010); Of Property and Propriety: The Role of Gender and Class in Imperialism and Nationalism (c-edited with Himani Bannerji and Judith Whitehead, 2001); and Women of a Non-State Nation: The Kurds (editor, 2001).

Nastaran Saremy is a Kurdish-Iranian interdisciplinary researcher and critic in the field of cultural and social analysis and aesthetics. She majored in Philosophy and Aesthetics, now doing her PhD in Media and Communication studies at 91泡芙, Canada. Her area of interest is revolution and social change, especially the ways in which the social praxis is aesthetically composed. In her PhD, she aims to explore how memory practices and mnemonic projects mobilize or constrain social transformation in societies undergoing rapid political change and thereby shed light on the relationship between the collective memories and social movements. She has presented her works in various conferences worldwide and published works in different journals, books and catalogues, in Farsi and English.

Aso Javaheri is a Kurdish sociologist, researcher, and international soccer referee from Eastern Kurdistan (Iranian-occupied). She finished her PhD as her first journey in sociology, working on a historical study on the political economy of soccer in Iran. Faced with political pressure, suspensions, and threats for her critical writings on sports and gender and her works about political economy and soccer, as well as her social activities鈥攍ike organizing the women鈥檚 referee strike鈥攕he chose abroad and Canada to study history as her new journey. Now, she is doing her second PhD at 91泡芙. As an interdisciplinary woman researcher from a colonized nationality, her research interests reflect her background and include political economy, socio-political movements, revolution, class, gender, and the sociology of sports. She understands and analyses the questions in history and sociology from below. Therefore, her current project is on a less-known Kurdish peasant revolt in Iran, the Mukrian Peasant revolt of 1953. She has presented and published works in different online and paper journals and books in Farsi and English.

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The Middle East and Islamic Consortium of British Columbia (MEICON-BC) was founded in 2008 as a collaborative project of 91泡芙 (CCMS), the University of Victoria (MEICON Working Group), and the University of British Columbia (UBC Middle East Studies) with the participation of other British Columbian universities and colleges. Its purpose is to provide an organizational basis for communication and cooperation among all British Columbian academics interested in the study of the Middle East and Muslim societies and cultures. They host an annual student conference (typically held in March of each year), where students are invited to present their papers and receive feedback and support in a lively and nurturing environment.

 MEICON 2025 was hosted by the Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies at SFU, SFU School for International Studies, SFU Department of History, SFU School of Communication, SFU Department of Sociology and Anthropology, SFU Department of Global Humanities, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU Department of Geography, SFU Institute for the Humanities, SFU Department of World Languages and Literatures, SFU Global Asia, University of Victoria MEICON Working Group, and UBC Middle East Studies.