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Alex Shams

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Iran

Iran Reporting

Quarantine Kitchen: Iranians share recipes, flavors, and joy despite the threat of coronavirus

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on March 15, 2020. Tehran has been under a state of semi-quarantine for 20 days. For weeks, millions have avoided leaving the house for

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Iran Opinion

Tehran is not just “LA with minarets”: Against cliches of Third World cities on the brink of disaster

Posted on January 14, 2019 by Alex Shams

The Guardian covered Tehran in its recent article series, “The next 15 mega cities,” an examination of metropolises across Asia and Africa that will soon hit the 15-million population mark.

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India Iran Reporting

How Nowruz is Celebrated Around the World

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on March 21, 2018. Nowruz is an ancient festival marking the arrival of Spring that is celebrated in parts of the Middle East, Central

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Iran Reporting

Samuel Jordan, the American missionary whose name graces Tehran’s most glamorous street

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Alex Shams

Originally published by “Ajam Media Collective” For residents of Tehran, the name “Jordan” conjures up images of luxury apartment towers, expensive brand names, and twenty-somethings in fancy cars who spend

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Iran Reporting USA

Sedentary Fragmentation: Toward a Genealogy of Chicago’s Iranian Art Scene

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective. In 1951, a young Iranian man named Hannibal Alkhas moved from Tehran to Chicago, where he spent the next decade studying at the Art

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Featured Iran Reporting

Iran Hits the Beach

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Alex Shams

Tourism is booming, and millions of Iranians are re-discovering the seductions of their northern Caspian Sea coast.

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Opinion

Why Did The Munich Killer Beg Us To See Him As German?

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Alex Shams

Originally published by MuslimGirl.net on July 23,2016. Republished on Huffington Post and Hummus for Thought. Translated to German and republished on Magna. Around and around we go. Yesterday, an 18-year old

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Opinion

Congress Is About to Pass a Dangerously Racist Bill. Our Response Must Be Solidarity Against Islamophobia.

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Alex Shams

Originally published on the Huffington Post. The last few weeks have seen a dangerous escalation of rhetoric targeting Muslims and Middle Eastern-Americans, as the national media and Republican presidential hopeful

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Opinion

Sacralizing a Shia Public Sphere: Muharram Commemorations Across Iran

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ajam Media Collective on December 1, 2015. The following is a photo essay by Ali Karjoo-Ravary, a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Opinion

Obama Defied GOP to Make Peace with Iran — Now It’s Time for Palestine

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Alex Shams

Originally published in Huffington Post. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vindictive policies are creating a climate in which Palestinians are once again rising up to reject their lack of freedom

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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

  • Workshop: Investigating Power
  • The “Terrorists” in My Grandmother’s Neighborhood
  • A Persian Christmas Story: How A Jewish Shrine in Qazvin Connects Palestine and Iran
  • ‘They Hit Everyone and Anyone’: From Lebanon, residents share what life has been like since Israel launched its attack.
  • Iran Braces for Uncertainty After President Raisi’s Death
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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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    The “Terrorists” in My Grandmother’s Neighborhood

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