• 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:

El Salvador

El Salvador Reporting USA

Reconstructing the Village of the Divino Salvador

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Los Angeles Review of Books on October 31, 2017. EVERY AUGUST, Salvadorans around the world celebrate the Festival of El Salvador del Mundo, the patron saint and

  • 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

  • “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
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

  • Inside Mexico's deep and unexpected legacy of Iranians
    Inside Mexico's deep and unexpected legacy of Iranians
  • Yara Shahidi, the Iranian-American Star of 'Black-ish,' Is Breaking Stereotypes On & Off Screen
    Yara Shahidi, the Iranian-American Star of 'Black-ish,' Is Breaking Stereotypes On & Off Screen
  • Sofreh aqd : à la découverte du mariage iranien
    Sofreh aqd : à la découverte du mariage iranien
  • Hormuz: A Psychedelic Ride through a Geological Wonder
    Hormuz: A Psychedelic Ride through a Geological Wonder
  • Hamas student list victorious in Birzeit University elections
    Hamas student list victorious in Birzeit University elections
  • Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran's Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice
    Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran's Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice
  • 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
  • Iraq's Turkmen mobilise for a post-ISIL future
    Iraq's Turkmen mobilise for a post-ISIL future
  • Tel Aviv 'Nakba' film festival keeps alive memories of 1948 in Israel
    Tel Aviv 'Nakba' film festival keeps alive memories of 1948 in Israel
  • The “Terrorists” in My Grandmother’s Neighborhood
    The “Terrorists” in My Grandmother’s Neighborhood

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 © 2009–2026 Alex Shams