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Alex Shams

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Alex Shams

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Islam

Featured Iran Reporting

Feats of Strength and Street Politics in Tehran – مواقع القوة وسياسات الشارع في طهران

Posted on July 26, 2022 by Alex Shams

Originally published in Journal Safar in September 2021 as part of Issue VI: Power. On the nights leading up to Ashura, the streets of Tehran turn a thousand shades of

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Featured India Reporting

Welcome to the Beef Capital of India

Posted on November 20, 2016 by Alex Shams

In Hyderabad, a cosmopolitan culinary culture fights back against the Hindu nationalist current sweeping the nation. A dish of tallava gosht slow frying in peanut oil on a cast-iron tava

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Reporting

Transgender Muslims in America Fight Bigotry on Two Fronts

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Alex Shams

Originally published on Muftah on April 15, 2016. The wave of Islamophobia erupting across the United States has taken a toll on every aspect of Muslim American life. A climate of

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Reporting

US Muslims shaken by ‘execution-style’ murders amid rising hostility

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Alex Shams

Whether or not Islamophobic motives are found, the reaction underscores feelings of an existential threat gripping some US Muslims

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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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Popular posts

  • Interview: Ilan Pappe on academic freedom in Israel and BDS
    Interview: Ilan Pappe on academic freedom in Israel and BDS
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    The “Terrorists” in My Grandmother’s Neighborhood
  • Neither Taharrush Gamea Nor Sexism Are Arab ‘Cultural Practices’
    Neither Taharrush Gamea Nor Sexism Are Arab ‘Cultural Practices’
  • Naskh va Taaliq: Connections Between Iran and Pakistan, Old and New
    Naskh va Taaliq: Connections Between Iran and Pakistan, Old and New
  • Interview: Nadia Abu El-Haj on archaeology and the Zionist project
    Interview: Nadia Abu El-Haj on archaeology and the Zionist project
  • Tanakura Bazaar: The Iranian Legacy of Beloved Japanese Soap Opera Oshin
    Tanakura Bazaar: The Iranian Legacy of Beloved Japanese Soap Opera Oshin
  • 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

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