On February 24, 2023, the Iran 1400 Project spoke with Dr. Liora Hendelman-Baavur about her book Creating the Modern Iranian Woman: Popular Culture between Two Revolutions. Dr. Hendelman-Bavuur looked at the interactions between global aspects of modernity and notions of identity in Iranian popular culture and explored what women’s magazines sought to display as the “modern Iranian woman.” She analyzed these magazines within a broader social, economic, political, and cultural context in order to demonstrate how representations of the modern woman in Iranian popular culture were influenced by religion, tradition, and the West. During the Q&A portion, she touched on a variety of subjects related to the magazines, from gharbzadegi, to censorship, to accessibility and readership.
Liora Hendelman-Baavur (PhD) is the Director of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies (ACIS) at Tel Aviv University and teaches at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History. She is the author of Creating the Modern Iranian Woman: Popular Culture Between Two Revolutions, editor of Iran then and Now: Society, Religion and Politics, 2017, and co-editor with David Menashri of Iran: Anatomy of Revolution, 2009.
