Speaking Out of Place Shaping Iranian Diasporic Identities in Times of Crisis and Change: A Conversation with Persis Karim and Roya Ahmadi
Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with Professor Persis Karim, co-producer and co-director of a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. She is joined by Roya Ahmadi, a student at Stanford who interned at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and was part of the production team for the film. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art. We talk about both the similarities and differences between those days and today—especially with regard to diasporic identity formation in different historical times, and the persistent need to resist racism and bigotry and act in solidarity with others.
Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master’s in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.
Roya Ahmadi is a senior at Stanford University studying Human Biology with a self-designed concentration in Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Women's Health and a minor in Interdisciplinary Arts. She is interested in Muslim and SWANA women's sexual and reproductive health and culturally/religiously sensitive pregnancy care. Roya is a co-chair for the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts Undergraduate Fellowship and a video and sound installation artist who has presented work in group shows across the US. Roya interned for the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at SFSU for two summers when she was in high school; the Center has had a deep impact on her artwork and her identity as an Iranian-American.
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