Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance: Neda Maghbouleh Reading

Featuring Neda Maghbouleh, Associate Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair in Migration, Race, and Identity, University of Toronto

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Neda Maghbouleh is an international expert on racial identity formation with a strategic focus on SWANA immigrants and refugees. She is Principal Investigator for the RISE Team, a major 5-year study of integration and wellbeing among Syrian newcomer refugees. Born in New York City and raised in Portland, Oregon, Maghbouleh now lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and six-year-old daughter, Neelu.

She is the author of The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race (Stanford University Press, 2017).

This conversation will feature the discussant, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Director of Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame, and will be moderated by Niloofar Adnani, Master of Global Affairs student at the Keough School.

Niloofar Adnani holds a BSc in mechanical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology. She also has completed graduate-level coursework in women’s studies at Allameh Tabataba’i University. While volunteering for various nongovernmental organizations, Niloofar developed analytical skills and gained an understanding of intersectional oppression and structural inequality. She has organized educational camps for students in underserved parts of Iran, raised funds for school construction projects, and supported the production of handicrafts by the Baluchi people, a nomadic minority group, and is also an active translator for Harasswatch, an Iran-based group that aims to mitigate the normalization of harassment and assault in public spaces. Niloofar’s first goal as a socialist feminist and graduate student is to stand against discrimination. She is the recipient of a Donald & Marilyn Keough Fellowship.

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is the author of Call Me Zebra, winner of the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award, the John Gardner Fiction Award and long listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. She is a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and a Whiting Writers Award Winner. Her novel, Savage Tongues, is forthcoming in 2021. She is the Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Notre Dame and a Fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Global Middle East and North Africa is a bi-annual symposium and lecture series that focuses on the study of literatures that have been shaped by histories of territorial and linguistic politics, colonialism, military domination, and gross human rights violations. The initiative grapples with the constructed nature of history; reimagines American and global history from the position of suppressed voices; and examines how minoritized writers and scholars have historically innovated literary production and theory in the process of responding to systemic violence.

Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance, launched by Associate Professor of English and Kroc Institute Faculty Fellow Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, is co-sponsored by the College of Arts & Letters, the Keough School of Global Affairs, and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. In addition, the fall remote lecture series is co-sponsored by the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.

Kroc Institute faculty members Asher Kaufman, Ebrahim Moosa, Atalia Omer, and Ernesto Verdeja serve on the advisory board for the series. In addition, the advisory board includes College of Arts and Letters faculty members Alison Rice, Perin Gürel, Barry McCrea, Francisco Robles, Olivier Morel, and Mark Sanders. This initiative would not have been possible without the contributions of advisory board member Chana Morgenstern, Lecturer in Postcolonial and Middle Eastern Literatures, Faculty of English, Cambridge University. For more information, visit the Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance website.

Other events in the series will take place on October 2 and November 6.

The fall speaker series is being co-sponsored by the Dean’s Office of the College of Arts & Letters, Keough School of Global Affairs, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and the Liu Institute for Asia & Asian Studies.