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Israel Palestine Reporting

After police killings, anger simmers in Negev Bedouin villages

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Alex Shams

Originally published on Ma’an News Agency on Feb. 5, 2015. BEERSHEBA (Ma’an) — The killing of two Bedouin youths in southern Israel by police over the last week has shocked the

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Academic Work Palestine Reporting

Palestinian Shared Worlds of Meaning, between George and Reuben

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on September 29, 2014. Ajam Media Collective recently worked with THE STATE, a Dubai-based publishing practice, to make a ‘zine. We provided the words and

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Palestine Reporting

Amid destruction, ordinary Gazans open homes, churches to displaced

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ma’an News Agency on August 13, 2014. The first day the bombs began to fall on Gaza, Refqa al-Hamallawy called a meeting in her office at the

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Palestine Reporting

Palestinian Christians receive the Holy Fire in Bethlehem

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ma’an News Agency on April 19, 2014. Thousands of Palestinian Christians marched in cities and villages across the Holy Land on Saturday to receive the holy fire

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Palestine Reporting

Designing the ‘Ceremonial Uniform’ for the Palestinian Authority: An Interview with Omar Joseph Nasser-Khoury

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ma’an News Agency on March 27, 2014. “The Ceremonial Vniform” opened to the public at Birzeit University Museum on March 20. Created by Palestinian artist Omar Joseph

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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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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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