The Alireza Ahmadian Lecture in Iranian and Persianate Studies presents: Remembering an Erased Past in Iran: The Color Black on February 1, 2025.
In this talk, Beeta Baghoolizadeh will discuss her first book, The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran, where she examines constructions of race, particularly Blackness, through enslavement and abolition in the 19th and 20th centuries. Through an analysis of archival, visual, and spatial sources, Beeta Baghoolizadeh unearths an intentionally hidden history within both institutional spaces and collective memory. Baghoolizadeh draws on photographs, architecture, theater, circus acts, newspapers, films, and more to document how the politics of visibility framed discussions around race and freedom in the modern period. In this way, Baghoolizadeh makes visible the people and histories that were erased from Iran and its diaspora.
Speaker
Beeta Baghoolizadeh (PhD, History, University of Pennsylvania) is Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University’s Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. Her book, The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran (Duke University Press, March 2024) examines questions of race and enslavement through memory and visuality, and has won the Scholars of Color First Book Award at Duke University Press. Beeta’s scholarship is featured in American Historical Review (AHR), Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (CSSAAME), and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. Prior to joining Princeton, Beeta was an Assistant Professor of History and Critical Black Studies at Bucknell University. Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), and she has also been a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center and a Regional Faculty Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wolf Humanities Center.
Discussant
Chouki El Hamel is a Professor in the History Department (now School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies) at Arizona State University, specializing in West and Northwest Africa. His training and Ph.D. studies in France at the Centre de Recherches Africaines (University of Sorbonne, Paris I & VII) were in African History and Islamic Societies. His research interests focus on the spread and the growth of Islamic culture and the evolution of Islamic institutions in Africa. He is particularly interested in the subaltern relationship of servile and marginalized communities to Islamic ruling institutions.
Registration is required. Register here: https://ubc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_t23LR04qQdi_dyesiKP-bg
