EVENT: ‘TEHRAN TOURIST A State of One’s Own’ Film Screening and Discussion with Roxanne Varzi
Date: Feb 1, 2023
Time: 6:00 – 7:30 pm EST
Location: TBC (in person at The New School)
During this event, The Gender and Sexuality Institute and The SexTech Lab at The New School co-host a special viewing of the short film, Tehran Tourist. This will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker – anthropologist, sound artist, playwright, essayist, Fulbright Scholar and Professor, Dr. Roxanne Varzi. Drawing on the Notion of “state” as both a nation and a way of being, Professor Varzi will discuss the friction between the attempt at subject formation, and the deep desire for choice – and the ways in which this tension subtly played on in the film. This event is in person and will not be recorded.
Dr. Roxanne Varzi is a Professor in the School of Social Science at University of California, Irvine. Her interests include Iran, war, Islam, visual anthropology, film, art/popular culture in Iran, social cultural anthropology, religious studies, visual culture, Islamic philosophy, theater, multi-modal anthropology,. She is the author of Last Scene Underground: An Ethnographic Novel of Iran (2013) and Warring Souls: Media, Martyrdom, and Youth in Post-Revolution Iran (2006). Her award-winning short stories have been published in a number of anthologies and magazines, including the New York Press. Her film, Plastic Flowers Never Die, has been shown in festivals around the world from Bosnia to Boston, and her sound installation, Whole World Blind, has been exhibited in galleries in San Francisco and Berlin and is featured on Public Books.