Women, Life, Freedom: Inside Iran's New Revolution - Pardis Mahdavi

Mon, January 30, 2023
Dinner Program

It has been over four months since Mahsa Amini's death under suspicious circumstances in Tehran. Arrested for allegedly not wearing the hijab, her death activated wide-spread protests across Iran. Despite brutal pushback from the Iranian regime, the protestors, including women and girls, did not back down. They continue to seek new ways to speak their truth and to speak out against the regime. Drawing on over two decades of research on sexual politics in Iran, as well as her personal experiences at the hands of the morality police, Pardis Mahdavi, professor of anthropology and provost and executive vice president at the University of Montana, will give a front-row seat to the dramatic changes happening in Iran today.

Pardis Mahdavi is the provost and executive vice president at the University of Montana. She previously served as associate professor and chair of anthropology at Pomona College. Her work focuses on gender and sexuality in the Muslim world, including gendered labor, sexual politics, labor migration, human rights, youth culture, transnational feminism, public health, human trafficking, and public health in the context of changing global and political structures. She is the author of "Passionate Uprisings: The Intersection of Sexuality and Politics in Post-Revolutionary Iran" (2008), "Gridlock: Labor, Migration and Human Trafficking in Dubai" (2011), and "From Trafficking to Terror" (2013).

A lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Mahdavi has been a fellow at the Social Sciences Research Council, the American Council on Learned Societies, Google Ideas, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has consulted for a wide array of organizations including the U.S. government, Google Inc., and the United Nations.