Zahra Al delivers an online free, public lecture as part of the Fall 2020 Intra-Disciplinary Seminar series. What do uprisings tell us about the social world? How do they teach us to theorize and analyze the contemporary conjuncture? Uprisings, in their various and contradictory forms, reveal the deployment, structure and functioning of social, political, economic and epistemic violence(s). Placing Iraq and Iraqis at the center of knowledge production and theorization, Zahra Ali will reflect on the various ways in which the Iraqi uprising and Iraqi activists enrich and challenge the sociological and feminist imagination on issues of justice, dignity, belonging and beyond. 

Registration is required.

Zahra Ali is a sociologist and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University-Newark. Her research explores dynamics of women and gender, social, and political movements in relation to Islam(s), the Middle East, and contexts of war and conflicts with a focus on contemporary Iraq. Ali engages with transnational and (post/de)colonial feminisms and epistemologies. Ali is the author of Women and Gender in Iraq: between Nation-building and Fragmentation (Cambridge University Press, 2018),  she also co-edited the journal volume Pluriversalisme Décolonial with Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun (Kimé, 2017) and edited Féminismes Islamiques (La Fabrique editions, 2012), translated from French into German, Turkish, and Spanish.

The IDS public lecture series is part of the Robert Lehman Visiting Artist Program at The Cooper Union. We are grateful for major funding from the Robert Lehman Foundation. The IDS public lecture series is also made possible by generous support from the Open Society Foundations.