Minoo Moallem
agitatejournalDr Minoo Moallem is a Gender & Women’s Studies professor and the Director of Media Studies at the University of California Berkeley. She is the author of Persian Carpets: The Nation as a Transnational Commodity (Routledge, 2018). Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Cultural Politics of Patriarchy in Iran, (University of California Press, 2005 ), and…
Fatemeh Sadeghi
agitatejournalDr Fatemeh Sadeghi is a political scientist specialized in political thought and gender studies. She previously researched on gender ethics in Islamic sharia and Zoroastrianism, gender in nationalism and Islamism, Islamist politics, and Iranian Revolution. She also studied the unveiling campaign of the first Pahlavi Iran and the compulsory hijab of the Islamic Republic. In recent years she worked on the constitutional thought in…
Yalda Hamidi
agitatejournalDr. Yalda Hamidi is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Minnesota State University. She is interested in transnational and Islamic feminisms, feminist pedagogy, and feminist cultural and literary studies. Her article, “Politics of Location in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis” is under publication in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. In 2020, she published “Locating Sickness:…
Woman Life Freedom: A Panel on the Protests in Iran
agitatejournalMahsa Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died while in the custody of the Iranian Guidance Patrol, has become the symbol of the massive protests in Iran. Iranian women have been in the forefront of the protests, removing their hijabs and/or cutting their hair. In this conversation, Professors Yalda Hamidi, Minoo Moallem, and Fatemeh…
For Life, When Death Crumbles
agitatejournalBy Sima Shakhsari Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in the hospital on September 16, 2022, three days after being arrested by the Iranian Guidance Patrol (also known as the “morality police” in English ) for her alleged “improper hijab.” Her murder became the mobilizing cry for the massive protests that have…
Statement in Support of the Iranian People’s Protests
agitatejournalBy Faculty and Students at the University of Minnesota As faculty and graduate students at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, we stand in solidarity with the Iranian people who are outraged by the mysterious death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish woman, who was killed while in the custody of the Iranian…
Feminisms, Translations, Solidarities: A workshop with the translators and editors of ‘The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics’
agitatejournalJoin us for a workshop with the editors and translators of the The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics on February 9, 2023, Thursday, 2:00 to 3:30pm US Central Time | 11:00pm to 12:30am Turkish Time. The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics (Pluto Books, 2022) is a one-of-a-kind collection of prison writings from more than 20 Kurdish…
Dear Rohith…
agitatejournalBy Ponni Arasu This letter is part of Holding Movements, Agitating Epistemes: A Multipart Series On Remembering, Retelling, And Dreaming For Justice co-convened and co-edited by Richa Nagar and Ponni Arasu. I dedicate this piece to Radhika Vemula, Rohith Vemula’s mother and to A. Mangai aka V. Padma, my mother. Two women who fight for…
AGITATE! Feminist Knowledge Production Event Series: Spring 2023
agitatejournalAGITATE! Journal invites you to a series of virtual workshops and discussions hosted in conjunction with the “Feminist Knowledge Production” seminar taught by Professor Richa Nagar in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. February 9: Feminisms, Translations, Solidarities: A Workshop with the Translators and Editors of ‘The Purple…
All-India Campaign against Anti-People FCA Rules, 2022
agitatejournalSTOP FOREST CONSERVATION RULES 2022! STOP VIOLATION OF FOREST RIGHTS ACT AND RIGHTS OF GRAM SABHAS! STOP CORPORATE TAKE OVER OF FORESTS! PROTECT OUR JAL JANGAL JAMEEN JEEVIKA! As you know the new Forest (Conservation) Rules 2022 are pending in Parliament and may be passed any day in the Budget session. It is very important…
Urgent Appeal: Supporting Earthquake Relief in Turkey and Syria
agitatejournalDear AGITATE! Readers, As you know, a devastating earthquake and its aftershocks hit Turkey and Syria on Monday, 5th February, wreaking unimaginable destruction and loss of life in areas already struggling with political repression, displacement, and underdevelopment. More than 20,000 lives have been lost, and this number is expected to rise. Tens of thousands who…
DBAV anti-caste feminists’ statement condemning the Hathras case judgement
agitatejournalOn the remembrance day of anti-caste crusader Savitri Phule, we the daughters of Savitri from Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi-Vimukta communities strongly condemn the judgement of the Uttar Pradesh special court which acquitted all four accused –all dominant caste Thakur men – of a heinous gangrape and murder of a 19-year old Valmiki (oppressed caste) woman, in the Hathras…
Feminisms, Translations, Solidarities: A Conversation with the Translators and Editors of ‘The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics’
agitatejournalIn February 2023, AGITATE! launched our Feminist Knowledge Production event series, organized in collaboration with Richa Nagar’s graduate seminar on Feminist Knowledge Production at the University of Minnesota. We are pleased to share with you a recording of the first event in the series: a conversation with the translators and editors of ‘The Purple Color…
Poetry, Academia, and Feminist Knowledge-Making: A Workshop with Celina Su
agitatejournalAs part of AGITATE! Journal’s Feminist Knowledge Production Series, we invited Celina Su—scholar, poet, and member of AGITATE! Editorial Board— to conduct a workshop titled Poetry, Academia, and Feminist Knowledge-Making on March 30, 2023. In the workshop, whose recording we present here, Su discusses poetry as mode of social inquiry and as a vehicle for…
A Adams
agitatejournalI Want to Tell a Story: An (Alleged) Exercise in Knowledge Production
agitatejournalBy A Adams For the record, this is an attempt at engaging knowledge production through non-academic means, produced for a Feminist Knowledge Production Seminar taught by Richa Nagar at the University of Minnesota in Spring 2023. In it, I ask: how do we produce knowledge from precarity? What actually generates the means by which we…
Black Feminism and Hip Hop Pedagogy: A Workshop by Ruth Nicole Brown
agitatejournalAs part of AGITATE! Journal’s Feminist Knowledge Production Series, we invited Ruth Nicole Brown—scholar, artist, and member of AGITATE! Editorial Board— to conduct a workshop titled Black Feminism and Hip Hop Pedagogy on March 23, 2023. In the workshop, whose recording we present here, Professor Brown draws on her research on Black girls’ lived experiences…
Ruth Nicole Brown
agitatejournalDr. Ruth Nicole Brown is the Inaugural Chairperson of the Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Her research and creative praxis explores how Black girls conceptualize freedom, creativity, and relationships in Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT). Brown founded SOLHOT in 2006 as a collective space to celebrate Black girlhood and…
Transnational Solidarities in the Balkans: Migration Justice Worldmaking
agitatejournalTransnational solidarities in the Balkans: migration justice worldmaking seeks to imagine and continue solidarity movement building with the migrants and refugees subjected to racial denigration, xenophobic refusals and rejection along the Balkan route and at the EU borders. The discussion amongst activists and comrades from Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina stems from the struggles…
Drishadwati Bargi
agitatejournalDrishadwati Bargi is a doctoral candidate in the department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota. She is soon to finish a dissertation on Dalit literature and anti caste cinema. Her interests include South Asian political writings and cinema, feminist theory and post structuralist theories of power and spectacle. She can be reached…
When the Functional is Political is Personal …Witnessing the Many Battles of Geeli Pucchi’s Bharati Mandal
agitatejournalBy Drishadwati Bargi In Indian cinema, we have encountered morally ambiguous lovers before. In Vishal Bharadwaj’s 2004 classic Maqbool, we see a relentlessly scheming Nimmi (played by the inimitable Tabu), flirting and courting with her lover/patron’s aide, treacherously aiding the former’s murder, and unleashing a tragedy that ultimately consumes everyone. We have seen the same…
A Collective Engagement with Critical Kashmir Studies
agitatejournalThe Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies (New York: Routledge, 2022) edited by Mona Bhan, Haley Duschinski & Deepti Misri By A. Adams, Missy Drew, Fatemeh Nasr Esfahani, Leith Ghuloum, Anna Goorevich, Natasha Hernández, Nina Kaushikkar, Vaishnavi Kollimarla, Pauline Maison-Dessemme, Nada Mohamed, Tahmina Sobat, Allie Thek, Nithya Rajan, and Richa Nagar Let me cry out…
Macron on the Banks of Turag: Sustainable Adaptation as Assimilation into an Imperial Order
agitatejournalBy Efadul Huq On 10th September 2023, Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, visited Bangladesh and was received with a gun salute and red carpet welcome. During the visit, Macron took a selfie with his Bangladeshi hosts after a boat ride on the Turag. Macron was there to enjoy the scenic beauty of Bangladesh’s rivers…
Call for Transnational Solidarity and Collective Care With the Victims of the Recent Earthquakes in Herat-Afghanistan
agitatejournalOrganized by Tahmina Sobat and Farida Razaqi Amidst the rubble and despair, the rescue team encountered a scene that will forever be etched in their hearts and ours; a mother, her eyes filled with tears but her spirit unbroken, clutching her baby in a final, desperate embrace… sheltering the baby from harm with her own…
Tahmina Sobat
agitatejournalTahmina Sobat is a women’s human rights lawyer from Afghanistan. She obtained a law degree from the Herat University of Afghanistan in 2015. Through the FPJRA scholarship, she earned her LLM degree in International Human Rights Law from the University of Notre Dame in 2020. She received a master’s degree in Gender and Women Studies…
Vaishnavi Kollimarla
agitatejournalVaishnavi is a performer and a MA/PhD student at the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is interested in exploring how performance is an important way of knowing, a pedagogy, and a medium through which we could explore questions of ethically co-existing with one another, in a world fraught…
Weaving ‘Trans-Communal Solidarities’: Responses and Reflections to AGITATE! Volume 4
agitatejournalBy Tahmina Sobat and Vaishnavi KollimarlaWith AGITATE! Editorial Collective, Participants in Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) graduate seminar on Ways of Knowing: Approaches to Knowledge and Truth (Fall 2022), Contributors to Volume 4 of AGITATE! Journal, and other speakers at Volume 4 launch.1 Over these past two years, the authors…
Marwan Makhoul
agitatejournalMarwan Makhoul is a Palestinian poet, born in 1979 in the village of al-Boquai’a, Upper Galilee, to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. He works in engineering as a managing director of a construction company. He has several published works in poetry, prose and drama, including the poetry collections: Hunter of Daffodils, Land of the Sad Passiflora, Verses the Poems Forgot…
نیا غزہ
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நேரம் மிச்சமில்லை அம்மாவின் கருவில் இனியும் தங்கியிருக்காதே என் சின்ன குழந்தையே விரைந்து வா உனக்காக ஏங்குகிறேன் என்பதற்காக அல்ல இங்கு போர் நடந்து கொண்டிருக்கிறது என்பதற்காகதான் நீ பார்க்க வேண்டும் என்று நான் விரும்பிய தேசத்தை நீ பார்க்காமல் போய்விடுவாய் என்கிற பயம் எனக்கு. உனது தேசம் நிலமல்ல நமது விதியை முன்பறிந்து மரித்த கடலும் அல்ல: அது உன் மக்கள் குண்டுகள் அதை உருக்குலைப்பதற்கு முன்பு வந்து அதைப் பார் விட்டுச் சென்றவர்கள் எல்லாம்…