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Alex Shams

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Iran

Academic Work Iran Reporting

Urban Space and the Production of Gender in Modern Iran

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on Feb. 23, 2015 and again in Women in Islam journal on Sept. 9, 2019.  What does an Islamic urban space look like? This question

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Iran Israel Opinion Palestine

The Politics of Boycotting Israel while Fighting Sanctions on Iran

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Jadaliyya on October 3, 2014. By: Alex Shams and Ali Abdi As the bombs rained down on Gaza this summer, we were reminded yet again of the

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Iran Opinion

Sectarian War or Political Mistake?

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally Published in Andisheh-ye Pouya, Tir 1393.

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Academic Work Iran Israel Opinion

Next Year in Tehran

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published on The New Inquiry on Feb. 20, 2014. An Iranian intellectual’s trip to Israel in the 1960s revealed the strange appeal of secular republicanism to religious ethno-supremacists In March

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Iran Opinion

From Tehran to Newcastle: “I Am Nasrine” and the Politics of Telling Migrant Narratives

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published on February 10, 2014 by Ajam Media Collective. “I Am Nasrine” is the first feature length-film from Iranian-British Director Tina Gharavi. Newly available on DVD, the BAFTA-nominated film

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Iran Opinion

15 Ways Sanctions Hurt Ordinary Iranians

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on October 3, 2013. Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has been placed under increasingly harsh rounds of sanctions by the US, the European Union, and the United

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Iran Opinion

Seeing Through the Haze: the Politics of Reporting Sanctions and Smog in Tehran

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on January 24, 2013. This winter has been a particularly rough one in Tehran. For the third year in a row, air pollution has

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Iran Opinion

No, Iran Didn’t Just Ban Women From Universities.

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on August 22, 2012. I awoke yesterday morning to a barrage of excited, fearful, and shocked emails and messages demanding to understand why Iran had

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Iran Reporting

Welcome to Qom: City of Samosas and Mullah Factories

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on March 8, 2012. The first glimpses of Qom are always a let-down. The approach begins about an hour into the journey south on

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Iran Opinion

Tehran from 435 Meters: The View from Geisha

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on December 27, 2011. Tehran is a city defined by a distinctly “Islamic modernity.” Although some have said it is not an “interesting” city

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About me

Alex Shams is an Iranian-American writer and a PhD student of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

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Recent posts

  • “Why Did So Many People Think This War Was a Good Idea?”
  • Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran’s Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice
  • Iran After Khamenei
  • Iran’s Protesters Are Caught Between State Repression and Foreign Intervention
  • Quiet Solidarity: The Underground Networks that Defied Israel’s War on Iran
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About

Born and raised in an Iranian-American family in Los Angeles, Alex Shams has long been fascinated by the stories that places can tell us. Growing up, he learned Persian and Spanish; in college, he learned Arabic and studied abroad at the American University of Cairo before moving to Beirut after graduation. After receiving his master’s in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard, he moved to Bethlehem, Palestine, where he was a journalist at Ma’an News Agency, the largest independent Palestinian news organization. He received his PhD. from the University of Chicago in Sociocultural Anthropology. His dissertation, entitled “Constructing Islamic Modernity: Power, Religion, and Masculinity in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” was based on three years of ethnographic research in Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan as well as archival research in the British Library and Ba’ath Party Archives.

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