In this engaging discussion, Amina Tawasil, an anthropologist and author, explores the lives of howzevi women in Iran. She uncovers how historical shifts post-1979 revolution shaped women's roles within seminaries. Tawasil shares fascinating insights from her fieldwork, revealing how clothing, particularly the black chador, influences identity and social interactions. The conversation highlights women's unique interpretations of self, critiques of societal norms, and the ongoing impact of modernity on traditional practices, making for a thought-provoking listen.
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insights INSIGHT
Women As Political Actors
Amina Tawasil reframes religiously conservative howzevi women as active agents shaping Iran's politics and institutions.
Their education and work, though often invisible, materially influence policy and law enforcement.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Embedded Fieldwork In Tehran
Tawasil lived in Tehran neighborhoods and attended classes to build trust and gather ethnographic detail.
She participated in daily routines like prayers, shopping, and weddings to observe women's practices closely.
insights INSIGHT
Khodshanasi As Analytic Lens
Tawasil centers the howzevi logic of the Muslim self (khodshanasi) as the framework for understanding choices.
This indigenous moral grammar explains actions better than external assumptions about modernization.
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This event was the launch of 'Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran' by Amina Tawasil.
This groundbreaking ethnography on Iranian howzevi (seminarian) women reveals how ideologies of womanhood, institutions, and Islamic practices have played a pivotal role in religiously conservative women's mobility in the Middle East.
This event was co-organised with the Department of Anthropology at LSE.
Meet the speaker and chair:
Amina Tawasil is an anthropologist serving as a Lecturer in the Programs in Anthropology at Columbia University's Teachers College since 2017. She has published several articles from her fieldwork in the Islamic Republic of Iran on seminarian women, and has recently published a book entitled, 'Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran' through Indiana University Press. Previously, she taught at the International Studies Institute, University of New Mexico after serving as the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Middle East and North African Studies program, with courtesy appointment in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. She is particularly interested in ethnographic and theoretical framings of anonymity, slow labor, time, urban situations, and performance. She is currently completing her fourth year of ethnographic fieldwork among graffiti writers in New York City, Philadelphia and urban New Jersey, which she has published a chapter on in the 'Ethnography of Reading at Thirty' edited volume.
Yazan Doughan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at LSE. Yazan is an anthropologist whose work straddles the linguistic and socio-cultural branches of the discipline, with close engagements with social and legal theory, conceptual and social history, and moral philosophy. His work blends ethnography, genealogy, and history to shed light on the question of social justice in contemporary postcolonial contexts, with Jordan as a primary field site.
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