• About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me

Alex Shams

  • About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me
Search for:

Alex Shams

  • About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me
Search for:
Tag:

Alex Shams India

India Iran Pakistan Reporting

On Persian pilgrimages, Pakistanis and Indians reconnect with Iran

Posted on December 6, 2018 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Dawn on December 6, 2018. Atop a rocky hill southeast of Tehran sits the shrine of Bibi Shahrbanu, a Persian princess who was the daughter of the last Sassanian

  • Share
India Reporting

Syriac Churches and Sephardic Synagogues: The Urban Legacy of Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanism in Kerala

Posted on June 11, 2016 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on March 2, 2016. At the southwestern tip of India in the state of Kerala sits the elegant port city of Kochi, the bustling

  • Share

About me

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

follow me on

Recent posts

  • 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
  • Our Man For Tehran
Search for:

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.

follow

Popular posts

  • A “Persian” Iran?: Challenging the Aryan Myth and Persian Ethnocentrism
    A “Persian” Iran?: Challenging the Aryan Myth and Persian Ethnocentrism
  • Bulgarian Habibi: How Orientalist Stereotypes in Chalga Music Recover Memories of the Balkans’ Ottoman Past
    Bulgarian Habibi: How Orientalist Stereotypes in Chalga Music Recover Memories of the Balkans’ Ottoman Past
  • Iranian Women Rapping and Kicking Ass
    Iranian Women Rapping and Kicking Ass
  • The Arab heart of Mexico City
    The Arab heart of Mexico City
  • Sofreh aqd : à la découverte du mariage iranien
    Sofreh aqd : à la découverte du mariage iranien
  • Chicago's Assyrians embrace new technology to save ancient language
    Chicago's Assyrians embrace new technology to save ancient language
  • In photos: Snow blankets historic Old City of Bethlehem
    In photos: Snow blankets historic Old City of Bethlehem
  • Why Did The Munich Killer Beg Us To See Him As German?
    Why Did The Munich Killer Beg Us To See Him As German?
  • When Persian was an Indian Language: The Fables of Jameh ul-Tamseel from Medieval Hyderabad to Modern Iran
    When Persian was an Indian Language: The Fables of Jameh ul-Tamseel from Medieval Hyderabad to Modern Iran
  • Inside Mexico's deep and unexpected legacy of Iranians
    Inside Mexico's deep and unexpected legacy of Iranians

Archive

Categories

  • Academic Work
  • Arab World
  • El Salvador
  • Featured
  • India
  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Israel
  • Lebanon
  • Mexico
  • Oman
  • Opinion
  • Pakistan
  • Palestine
  • Reporting
  • USA
Back to top
Copyright © 2009–2022 Alex Shams