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Tanakura Bazaar: The Iranian Legacy of Beloved Japanese Soap Opera Oshin

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Alex Shams

Originally published on Ajam Media Collective on Feb. 16, 2021. In markets across Iran, Tanakura Bazaars can be found dedicated to second-hand clothes, knock-off brand name shoes, and Iranian-made shirts

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Alex Shams is an Iranian-American writer with a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago.

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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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