Please join us for a book talk with Prof. Arash Davari on his recently published Insurgent Witness: Archetypes of Action in Revolutionary Iran (Cambridge University Press). In this talk, he will revisit histories of the 1979 revolution in Iran and explore how millions of people defied expectations and joined popular assemblies to demand the fall of the Pahlavi regime. Through the lens of recent global social movements, Davari presents an archetype of collective identity as partisan and spectator at once. This analysis of revolutionary subjectivity describes the terms of mass revolt in Iran while simultaneously challenging prevailing assumptions about social change and popular sovereignty in contemporary political thought.

This event is both in-person and online. Register for the Zoom link above.

Arash Davari is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is the author of Insurgent Witness: Archetypes of Action in Revolutionary Iran (Cambridge University Press) as well as a number of writings at the intersection of political theory and Middle East history. He is a co-editor of the Iran page at Jadaliyya. He is also co-editing a volume of English-language translations of writings by Ali Shariati (under contract with the University of Minnesota Press).

Presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa and co-sponsored by the History of Consciousness Department.