Join Azar Nafisi in conversation with Kristin Poole, SVMoA Artistic Director, and Martha Williams, The Community Library’s Programs & Education Manager, on contemporary issues of social change in Iran and the role women have played there recently.
Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. Reading Lolita in Tehran has been translated in 32 languages, and has won diverse literary awards. Dr. Nafisi has earned national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran’s intellectuals, youth, and especially young women. Nafisi conducted workshops in Iran for women students on the relationship between culture and human rights; the material culled from these workshops formed the basis of a new human rights education curriculum. She has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture, as well as the human rights of the Iranian women and girls and the important role they play in the process of change for pluralism and an open society in Iran. In addition to numerous awards Nafisi has been awarded honorary doctorates from Mt. Holyoke College (2012), Seton Hill University (2010), Goucher College (2009), Bard College (2007), and Nazareth College. She was recently named a Georgetown University/Walsh School of Foreign Service 2018-2019 Centennial Fellow.
