The MELA Social Justice Committee will host a virtual lecture with Dr. Beeta Baghoolizadeh as part of the Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) Social Justice Lecture Series 2020-2021 season, Stories and Silences: Research on Race in the Middle East. The lecture will be on January 21st, 2021, at 11AM EST (UTC -5), and *will not be recorded*, so we hope you are able to join us in person!
Please register for the lecture here: http://bit.ly/MELABaghoolizadeh
“We had no slaves in Iran”: Uncovering Evidence of an Erased History
In this talk, Dr. Baghoolizadeh will speak on the process of abolition as one of erasure in Iran. Although wealthy and elite Iranians had enslaved peoples from the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and East Africa for centuries until the Manumission Law of 1929, references to any history of enslavement are often denied or downplayed both in academic and non-academic settings. Drawing on linguistic, spatial and visual sources, Dr. Baghoolizadeh will speak on these erasures in archival contexts to discuss their lingering influence in shaping discussions on enslavement and race in Iran.
Beeta Baghoolizadeh (PhD, History, University of Pennsylvania) is an Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Bucknell University. She is currently working on her book project, tentatively titled, The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran. The Color Black draws on visual, textual, and spatial sources to examine how the term “black” came to take on different meanings throughout each phase of abolition, emancipation, and the lasting legacies of slavery. Dr. Baghoolizadeh is the director of the Ajam Digital Archive and the artist behind “Diaspora Letters.” She serves as the Resident Historian for the Collective for Black Iranians.