From Tehran: March 27, 2020
Jadaliyya's Noura Erakat and Bassam Haddad discuss developments in Iran with Hoda Katebi, an organizer and educator based in Chicago, and Alex Shams, a PhD student in Anthropology based in Tehran.
PhD Student in Anthropology at the University of Chicago
Alex Shams is a writer and Phd student of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. His research is focused on sacred space and pilgrimage in the Middle East. He is also an editor of Ajam Media Collective, an online platform focused on cultural and social issues in Iran and Central Asia. He is based in Tehran and his writing can be found here.
Iranian-American Writer, Organizer, and Educator in Chicago
Hoda Katebi is an Iranian-American writer, community organizer, and creative educator based in Chicago. Her creative political fashion work has been hailed from the BBC to the New York Times to the pages of VOGUE and featured/cited in books, journals, and museums around the world. Hoda is the host of #BecauseWeveRead, a radical book club and discussion series with chapters globally; founder of Blue Tin Production, an all-women immigrant & refugee-run apparel manufacturing workers co-operative; and organizer with Believers Bail Out, a national effort using zakat to bail Muslims out from pretrial & immigration incarceration. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2016 where her research explored the intersections of fashion, gender, and the state in Iran.
