Title: Iranian Women Writers and the Question of Reader Responsibility
Abstract: In this presentation, I examine the question of readers’ responsibility vis-à-vis fiction by contemporary Iranian women writers. Against a backdrop of Iranian women’s writing being treated as a barometer of women’s agency and/or subjugation, I propose ways of reading that complicate the assumption that women’s writing merely mirrors Iranian society today. Drawing on works by Belqeys Soleimani and Fereshteh Sari, I focus on the ways their fiction complicates questions of subjectivity, challenging us to read beyond the binarism of resistance or conformity.
Bio: Nasrin Rahimieh is Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities and Associate Dean for Academic Personnel in the School of Humanities at UC Irvine. Her teaching and research are focused on modern Persian literature, the literature of Iranian exile and diaspora, contemporary Iranian women’s writing, and postrevolution Iranian cinema. Among her publications are Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity (2015), Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry (2010) co-edited with Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History (2001), the English translation of the late Taghi Modarressi’s last novel, The Virgin of Solitude (2008), and Oriental Responses to the West (1990). Her current project is on contemporary Iranian women’s literature.