Description:

You are cordially invited to the launch of The Colloquium for Global Iran Studies (CoGIS) at Northwestern. CoGIS aims to create the first dedicated space at Northwestern for developing critical research on, and cultural inquiry about, modern Iran and its diasporas. With this launch, we hope to build an interdisciplinary, collective, and collaborative forum where faculty, staff and graduate students come together to deepen our understanding of Iran in its historical, regional, and global contexts. The Colloquium will invite the broader Northwestern community to participate in various panels and events on multiple themes. The Colloquium is committed to imaginative, rigorous, and comparative approaches that engage and expand the strengths of area studies in conversation with such fields as American studies, ethnic studies and critical studies of education.  

The Colloquium’s vision is to bring increased attention to the study of modern Iran and its diasporas, which has been underrepresented at Northwestern and within the North American academy alike. This under-representation—compounded by visa bans and their limitations on Iranian mobility—greatly impacts possibilities for scholarly, artistic and more broadly cultural, exchange. In the age of “maximum pressure” on Iran in the United States, cultivating an interdisciplinary intellectual community across the University committed to deepening our collective knowledge and understanding of modern Iran and its diverse diasporas and peoples is a must. CoGIS sets out to build the analytical, methodological, and pedagogical tools necessary to unlearn persistent misconceptions and prevalent oversimplifications that explain away Iran and learn from those voices committed to critical inquiry “under maximum pressure.” 

Please register for this event.