March 30, 2010 - 8:55am
The role of women in Iran and their struggle for democracy is the topic of the keynote lecture during the annual Liberal Studies spring conference at Vancouver Island University April 7.
Dr. Victoria Tahmasebi, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough, will talk about her experiences while in Iran during the tumultuous summer elections of 2009 when the non-violent “Green movement” challenged the election results that returned President Ahmadinejad and Islamic hardliners to power.
“In Liberal Studies, we want our students to grapple with a major intellectual tradition for the sake of a deep and thoughtful engagement with the contemporary world,” said VIU Professor Dr. Mark Blackell.
In line with this aim, the department is bringing Dr. Tahmasebi to VIU’s Nanaimo campus to present a talk entitled, “Women and the Struggle for Democracy and Human Rights in Iran: A Global Perspective.”
After massive protests against the rigged election, the government of Iran and its security forces brutally attacked the peaceful demonstrations of people in the streets of Tehran and other cities, according to Dr. Tahmasebi.
“The extraordinary peaceful heroism of women demonstrators has awakened us in the West to the massive presence of women in Iran’s Green Movement,” she said. “The world watched Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old philosophy student who participated in a peaceful demonstration in Tehran, bleeding to death with a single bullet in her heart. Her image came to epitomize the victimization of Iranian women, but also their courage, and self-determination in writing their own history.”
Situating Iranian women’s movement as caught between the two meta-narratives of neo-colonialism and Islamic fundamentalism which shape our current imagination of the “Islamic World,” Professor Tahmasebi will address a wide range of issues relevant to our understanding of women’s struggle for democracy and human rights in the Middle East.
Of particular significance are the relationship between Islam and democracy, recent Iranian election and the Green Movement, Iran/US relations, and Western media representations of the “Muslim Woman.”
Dr. Tahmasebi’s talk takes place on Wednesday, April 7 at 3:15 pm in Building 356, Room 109 (doors open at 3 pm.)
A reception will follow and everyone is welcome to attend this free event.
Dr. Tahmasebi holds a BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of Toronto and an MA and a PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University. She is a regular guest on various media such as TVO, CBC, CBC Radio, Voice of America and Farsi speaking Radio and TV channels on the topics of gender and politics in the Middle East.
The public is also invited to attend any part of the annual Liberal Studies Spring Conference (April 6-8 in Building 355) at VIU’s Nanaimo campus. Third and fourth year students will present the fruits of their interdisciplinary research throughout the event. A complete schedule of presentations will be posted in Building 355.
Anyone interested in the nature of a liberal education is also invited to attend an open seminar on Thursday, April 8 from 12:30-2 pm in Room 211 of Building 355.
VIU’s Liberal Studies Department offers students a minor and major toward a Bachelor of Arts degree. It’s an integrated form of education that brings together literature, philosophy, art history, and the history of science from Ancient Greece to the 21st century.
“Liberal Studies is quite a unique program because students study the greatest books, poems, paintings, sculptures, and scientific discoveries in the Western tradition,” said VIU professor Dr. David Livingstone. “Our first-year courses give an introduction to our integrated, seminar-based program and we offer a chronologically ordered cycle of courses in the third and fourth years that work exclusively through the texts and art that were written in the time-periods we are studying.”
“We invite students to raise their level of comprehension and conversation to include famous thinkers and writers such as Aristotle, Shakespeare, Wollstonecraft, Nietzsche, and Einstein. The experience develops critical thinking and communication skills that employers want. But it’s also an education for life.
“It’s quite remarkable to see how our students develop over four years in this program,” Livingstone added. “You can’t study these amazing works without coming away with a wider view of the world and our place in it.”
VIU recently conducted a study which asked Liberal Studies graduates what they thought of the program. The most common comment students made was that it had a “profound and positive effect on their lives.” Many reported that it was their best experience educationally, and that it was “life-changing.”
Tags: In the Community
