Minoo Moallem
Minoo Moallem is a professor of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley. She is a postcolonial, transnational feminist scholar specializing in cultural studies, consumerism, Islamic nationalism and transnationalism, immigration and diaspora, material and visual cultures of religion, and Iranian cultural politics and diasporas.
Subjects: Gender & Intersectionality Studies
Books
Articles
Aestheticizing Religion, Sensorial Visuality and Coffeehouse Painting in Iran
Published: Oct 21, 2014 by Sensational Religion edited by Sally Pomey, Yale University Press, 2014.
Authors: Minoo Moallem
Subjects:
Art & Visual Culture
This book chapter focuses on coffeehouse paintings in the spaces of coffeehouses, where they historically emerged as a form of popular urban art. I argue for recognition of the sensorial visuality of these paintings since they create sensorial bonds between Iranian culture and Shia Islam through the activation of objects, icons, sounds, songs, stories, colors, and spaces invoking mythical and spatial memories that transgress the linear temporality of modern nationalism.
Praying through the senses: The Prayer Rug/Carpet and the Converging Territories of the Material and the Spiritual
Published: Sep 21, 2014 by Material and Visual Cultures of Religion online publication, Yale University, 2014.
Authors: MInoo Moallem
Subjects:
Media and Cultural Studies
In this essay, I argue that religious practices are based not only on textual and ideological grounds but also on sensual and affective everyday experiences. These practices are aestheticized through embodied experiences of sight, sound, touch, and memory.
Passing, Politics and Religion
Published: Aug 21, 2011 by The Scholar & Feminist Online is a webjournal published three times a year by the Barnard Center for Research on Women
Authors:
Subjects:
Gender & Intersectionality Studies
Through a close reading of one of the most broadly distributed Iranian movies called “The Lizard/Marmoulak” (Kamal Tabrizi, 2004) and an analysis of a number of Iranian films that depict passing as their central theme, I examine the cinematic display of bodies that are ambiguous with respect to gender, nation, and religion, and transgress representational practices by opening up the possibility of strategic shifts of identity.