Negar Mottahedeh

Associate Professor of Literature

External Address:

125C Friedl Building (E. Campus), Buchanan And Trinity, Durham, NC 27708-0670

Internal Office Address:

Box 90670, Durham, NC 27708-0670

Phone:

(919) 681-3461

Email:

negar@duke.edu

Overview

I am a cultural critic and theorist specializing in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies and Film and Media Studies. I have published four books on Iranian Cinema, the history of reform, revolution and the uses of social media in protest. My new book "#iranelection: Hashtag Solidarity and the Transformation of Online Life" (Stanford University Press, 2015) is about one such social media mobilization. "#iranelection" follows the protest movement around Iran's fraudulent presidential election in 2009 to investigate how emerging social media platforms developed as a result of the international solidarity around the hashtag. Just as the world turned to social media platforms to understand the events on the ground, social media platforms adapted and developed to accommodate global activism. "#iranelection" reveals the new online ecology of social protest and offers a prehistory, of sorts, to the uses of hashtags and trending topics, of selfies and avatar activism, citizen journalism and YouTube mashups.

Languages
Fluent: English, Farsi (Modern Persian), Norwegian Bokmål and Nynorsk
Proficient: French, German, Arabic (Classical and Modern), Spanish

Education & Training

Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 1998
M.A., University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 1994
B.A., Mount Holyoke College 1990

Signature course "Hashtags Memes & Digital Tribes". Office of the Dean. January 01, 2016

Middle East Book Award for #iranelection. Washington Post. 2015

Arts and Sciences Annual Research Grant for “#iranelection”. Duke University. 2015

The Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation for “BP Oil films”. Duke University. 2015

Humanities Writ Large Grant for “Muslim Publics”. Mellon Foundation. 2013

Partnership in a Global Age Grant for “Art of Democratic Revolution”. Mellon Foundation. 2013

Latifeh Yarshater Award for "Representing the Unrepresentable". Persian Heritage Foundation. August 2008

Persian Heritage Foundation Book Award for Displaced Allegories. Persian Heritage Foundation, Columbia University . 2008

Faculty Fellow. John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University. 2004

Rockefeller Foundation Residency Program Fellowship. Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers University. 2001

Pages

Selected Grants

Abdu'l Baha in America or How did a Middle Eastern 19th Century Reformer Impact American Cultural Life and Politics? awarded by Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation (Principal Investigator). 2010 to 2011

A Research Project to Highlight the History, the Production, as Well as the Aesthetic and Stylist Traditions of Six Worl awarded by Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation (Principal Investigator). 2003 to 2004

Mottahedeh, N, Szeman, I, and O'Driscoll, M. After oil 2015 (Accepted). Petrocultures Research Group (in partnership with press), 2016.

Mottahedeh, N. #iranelection: Hashtag Solidarity and the Transformation of Online Life. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015. (Monograph)

Mottahedeh, N. Introduction. April 3, 2013. Full Text

Mottahedeh, N. 'Abdu'l-Bahá's journey West: The course of human solidarity. April 3, 2013. Full Text

Mottahedeh, N. Representing the Unpresentable: Images of Reform from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008. (Monograph)

Mottahedeh, N. Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. (Monograph)

Mottahedeh, N. "Review of Pedram Khosronejad's 'Iranian Sacred Defence Cinema: Religion, Martyrdom, and National Identity'." Ed. P Khosronejad. Anthropology of the Contemporary Middle East and Central Eurasia 1.2 (2013): 178-180.

Mottahedeh, N. "Review of Nacim Pak-Shiraz's 'Islam in Iranian Cinema: Religion and Spirituality in Film'." Contemporary Islam (August 2012): 79-80.

Mottahedeh, N. "Review of Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum's 'Abbas Kiarostami'." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 29.3 (August 2009): 409-411. Full Text

Mottahedeh, N. "Review of Hamid Dabashi's 'The Making of a Rebel Filmmaker: Makhmalbaf at Large'." Cinema Journal 49 (2009): 167-169.

Mottahedeh N, . "Review of Richard Tapper's 'The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation, and Identity'." Ed. R Tapper. Iranian Studies 38.2 (June 2005): 341-344.

Mottahedeh, N. "Review of Hamid Naficy's 'An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking'." Iranian Studies 36.3 (2003): 398-400.

Mottahedeh, N. "Review of Nasrin Rahimieh's 'Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History'." Iranian Studies 36.1 (2003): 141-145.

Mottahedeh N, . "Review of Kamran Talattof and Jerome W. Clinton's 'The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric'." Journal for Iranian Research and Analysis (2001): 113-114.

Mottahedeh, N. "Review of Nader Ahmadi and Fereshteh Ahmadi's 'Iranian Islam: The Concept of the Individual'." Iranian Studies 33.1-2 (2000): 200-201.

Mottahedeh, N. "The people: The #selfie's urform." Selfie Citizenship. January 1, 2017. 59-62. Full Text

Mottahedeh, N. "the people [pee-puh l] verb, noun : networked contagion. related forms: #selfie (Accepted)." 2016. (Chapter)

Mottahedeh, N. "Abdu’l Bahá and the Baha’i Message of Human Solidarity (Accepted)." The First Universal Races Congress of 1911: Empires, Civilizations, Encounters. Ed. M Bonakdarian, IC Fletcher, and Y Simpson Fletcher. 2016. (Chapter)

Mottahedeh, N. "One Light : Cinema and Islamic Spirituality (Accepted)." Whiley-Blackwell Companion to Islamic Spirituality. Ed. B Lawrence and V Cornell. 2016. (Chapter)

Mottahedeh, N. "Crude Extractions: the Voice in Iranian Cinema (Accepted)." Locating the Voice in Film. Ed. T Whittaker and S Wright. 2016. (Chapter)

Mottahedeh, N. "Tehran in Cinema (Accepted)." Tehran in the Iranian Cultural Imaginary. Ed. N Rahimieh and D Parviz Brookshaw. 2016. (Chapter)

Mottahedeh, N. "Karbala Drag Kings and Queens." Eternal Performance: Ta'ziyeh and Other Shiite Rituals. Ed. PJ Chelkowski. London: Seagull Books, 2010. 149-169. (Essay)

Mottahedeh, N. "Woman is Color: on Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh." Cines del Sul (International Film Festival Book). May 2008. (Essay)

Mottahedeh, N. "The New Iranian Cinema." Traditions in World Cinema. Ed. L Badley, S Schneider, and RB Palmer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. 176-189. (Essay)

Mottahedeh, N. "Women, Gender and Constituting the Female Body." Iran, Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. Ed. S Joseph. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006. (Essay)

Pages

Mottahedeh, N. "Le Vent Nous Portera: of lovers possessed, times entangled, and bodies carried away (Accepted)." (2016).

Mottahedeh, N. "Crude Extraction in Iran: Territorial Expansion and Benthic depths in sponsored oil films (Accepted)." (2016).

Mottahedeh, N. "Unruly voices and Narratives (Accepted)." (2016).

Mottahedeh, N. "'Hashtag solidarity and the radical kinship of Twitter’s #iraneletion' Medium https://medium.com/@negaratduke June 12 2015." Medium (June 12, 2015). (Occasional Writing)

Mottahedeh, N. "Hashtag solidarity in Iran: How the Green Movement mobilized social media in the interest of social change." Stanford University Press Blog (June 2015). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "Anatomy of a Tweet." The Immanent Frame: a journal for the SSRC (February 2015).

Mottahedeh, N. "How #Iranelection Transformed the Public Sphere." IslamiCommentary: Forum for Public Scholarship (June 2014). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N, and Saljoughi, S. "Rethinking Gender in Contemporary Iranian Art and Cinema Introduction." IRANIAN STUDIES 45.4 (2012): 499-502. Full Text

Mottahedeh, N. "Green is the New Green: Social Media and the Post Election Crisis in Iran 2009 (Accepted)." New Politics 8.1 (July 2010).

Mottahedeh, N. "Brainquake Not Boobquake." Religion Dispatches (May 2010).

Pages

Mottahedeh, N. "Iranian Women in Protest 1953, 1978, 2009." Ed. J Beller. Scholar and Feminist Online: Feminist Media Theory 10.3 (2012). (Special issue)

Mottahedeh, N. "Negative Refractions: Recent Feminist Writing on the Middle East." Women’s Studies Quarterly: The Global Intimate 34.1/2 (2006): 464-470. (Special issue)

Mottahedeh, N. "Karbala Drag Kings and Queens." The Drama Review: Ta’ziyeh 49.4 (2005): 73-85. (Special issue)

Mottahedeh, N. . Full Text

Mottahedeh, N, Kuntsman, A, and Stein, R. "Political Consciousness of a Selfie." (July 2015).

Mottahedeh, N. "Hashtag solidarity in Iran: How the Green Movement mobilized social media in the interest of social change." (June 12, 2015).

Mottahedeh, N. Representing the Unpresentable: Historical Images of Reform from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ed. JW Mowitt. 1998. (PhD Thesis)

Mottahedeh, N. "A Revolutionary Meme." Cinema Journal: In Media Res (August 2015). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "#iranelection." The Page 99 Test (July 2015). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "A Revolution of Flesh and Data." Duke Magazine (July 2015). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "Hashtag solidarity and the radical kinship of Twitter’s #iraneletion." Medium (June 2015). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "How #Iranelection transformed the Public Sphere." IslamiCommentary: Forum for Public Scholarship (June 16, 2014). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "Allah-o-Akhbar." ArteEast Quarterly C+: The Iran Issue. (April 2012). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "Brainquake Not Boobquake." Religion Dispatches (May 2010). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "Green is the New Green: Social Media and the Post Election Crisis in Iran 2009." New Politics 8.1 (2010). (Scholarly Commentary)

Mottahedeh, N. "Picturing Ourselves: 1953, 1979 and 2009." Frontline: Tehran Bureau (July 2009). (Scholarly Commentary)