Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani: Bodies in Revolt

Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani (Vancouver)
“Bodies in Revolt”

Donnerstag, 25. November 2010, 12:00 s.t.
Seminarraum 1 des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte
Universitäts-Campus, Spitalgasse 2-4/Hof 1, 1090 Wien

The presentation will explore the female body in 20th century Iran as a landscape of revolt and subjection. It unfolds the ways in which a sequence of historical events played themselves out on female bodies, specifically the constitutional revolution, the quest to modernization, the unveiling and re-veiling of women, (de-) westernization, various foreign presences, and the Islamic revolution. Keeping in mind the ways in which these bodies were instrumentalized to signal ideologies at the root of foreign and domestic policies, the talk takes a literary turn, to draw insights from 20th century Iranian female authors who thematize their bodies poetically to recreate, challenge, and complicate existing discourses.