Sexing Diaspora: A Study on Cultural and Racial (Re)presentation of Diasporic Femininities, Masculinities and Sexualities

Dr Fataneh Farahani

In her research on diasporic femininities, masculinities and sexualities, Dr Farahani examines predominantly Iranian born men and women’s self-presentation and understanding of their bodies and sexual desire in different diasporic spaces. She is mainly interested in individuals’ (re)negotiations of sexuality and subjectivity as they shift across multiple boundaries within historically specific, yet contingent and relational, social contexts. With gender and sexuality as the main subjects of analysis of Iranian women’s narrations of diasporic life in Sweden, for this presentation She will focus on issues involving sexuality, identity, subjectivity, difference, otherness, domination, agency, and marginality.

Bio

Fataneh Farahani has a PhD in Ethnology from the Department of Ethnology, Comparative Religion and Gender Studies at Stockholm University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Research in International Migration and Ethnic Relations (CEIFO) at Stockholm University. Fataneh’s published doctoral thesis, Diasporic Narratives of Sexuality: Identity Formation among Iranian- Swedish Women , is an ethnographical account of sexuality among Iranian women living in Sweden and was awarded for 2007 best dissertation of faculty of humanity at Stockholm University. Currently she is affiliated with Goldsmiths College at the University of London, and conducts field-research in London.

Organiser: Bloomsbury Gender Network and the Centre for Gender Studies (SOAS)

Contact email: N.S.Al-Ali@soas.ac.uk