Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi

Office Hours: MW 10-11 Zoom
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CV

Research

As a scholar of cultural, literary, gender, and sexuality studies, my research concerns the literature of the Middle East with a special focus on Persian and Armenian literature. Focusing on the members of gender, sexual, class, ethnic, and religious minoritized populations, I have examined topics ranging from the representation of social, sexual, and religious subalterns and transgressors in medieval Persian Sufi poetry to sigheh marriages (temporary marriages) and the stigmatized sigheh women in modern Iranian fiction and film to Iranian Armenian diasporic writers and artists and their sense of identity. As an interdisciplinary scholar, I engage with a broad array of sources from fiction, film, visual arts, and other forms of cultural production, ethnographic materials, and historical sources to feminist and literary theories. My main research methodology remains close reading of original texts and textual analysis.

Awards

UNC Arts and Humanities Research Grant, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research & Institute for the Arts and Humanities, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2022-23.
UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities Publication Grant, Spring 2022.
UNC Collaborative Online International Learning Grant, UNC Global Center, 2021-2022.
UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Taylor Fellow, spring 2021.
Faculty of Color and Indigenous Faculty Group Grant, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, UNC-Chapel Hill, Spring 2021.
The Carlyle Sitterson Award for Teaching First-Year Students, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2020.
UNC Office of Research Development Publication Grant, Office of Research Development, 2020-2021.
UNC QEP Integration of Making into Courses Grant, BeAM Program, 2019-2020.
UNC Research-Related Skills Course Development, Office of Undergraduate Research, 2019-2020.
UNC Summer School Online Course Conversion Grant, Spring 2019.
Carolina Asia Center Course Development Grant, spring 2019.
UNC Summer School Teaching with Technology Mini-Grant, spring 2019.
American Institute of Iranian Studies, conference organization grant, spring 2019.
UNC IAH Schwab Academic Excellence Award, spring 2018.
NYU-Abu Dhabi Institute Conference Organization Grant, 2017. (co-organized with Janet Afary).
UNC University Research Council Grant, June 2017.
UNC First Year Seminar Course Development Grant, spring 2017.
UNC University Research Council Publication Grant, fall 2016.
UNC Reynolds Junior Faculty Development Award, fall 2016.
Hammed Shahidian Critical Feminist Award, Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation, 2014.
Jafar and Shokoh Farzaneh Paper Prize in Persian Literature and Culture, SCMLA, 2012.

Publications

Monographs and Edited Volumes

Transnational Culture in the Iranian Armenian Diaspora. Islamic and Middle East Studies: Diaspora and Transnationalism Series. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2023.

The #MeToo Movement in Iran: Reporting Sexual Violence and Harassment. edited Volume. Sex, Marriage and the Family in the Middle East series. London, UK: IB Tauris/Bloomsbury Press, 2023.

Fardiyat dar ‘Attar (translation of Subjectivity in ‘Attar in Persian). Translated by Arash Khoshsafa. London, UK: Mehri Publications, 2021.

Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Iranian Film and Literature. Global Middle East Series. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Subjectivity in ‘Attar, Persian Sufism, and European Mysticism. Comparative Cultural Studies Series. Purdue, Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2017.

Select Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

“Iranian Armenian Poetry: Sonia Balassanian Crossing Borders of Consciousness.” Women Poets Iranica. Encyclopedia Iranica Foundation, 2022. https://poets.iranicaonline.org/article/iranian-armenian-poetry-sonia-balassanian-crossing-borders-of-consciousness/?fbclid=IwAR1xHJSHFqg1pTbOKQ4pg2h1h8pD6UpVYuGzyTq2r9vhmx27RnYm504IIgU

“Seyr-e tahavol-e gofteman-e jensiati dar Iran-e modern.” (The Evolution of Gender Discourse in Modern Iran). Freedom of Thought Journal 11. 1 (2022): 77-90. (in Persian)

 “Multiple Consciousness and Transnationalism in Iranian Armenian Cultural Productions,” Middle East Critique 31.1 (2022): 81-97.

 “Racial Profiling of Armenian Iranians in the U.S.: Omid Fallahazad’s ‘Citizen Vartgez’.” Iran-Namag: A Bilingual Quarterly of Iranian Studies 6. 2 (2021): 154-172.

 “Introduction.” Coauthored with Asghar Seyed-Gohrab. Iran-Namag: A Bilingual Quarterly of Iranian Studies 6. 2 (2021): 4-12.

“The Significance of Armenian Language in Iranian Armenian Diasporic Literature.” The Doha Institute Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (Sept. 2021): 1-6.

 “Over 40 Years of Resisting the Compulsory Veiling: Relating Literary Narratives to Text-Based Protests to Cyberactivism.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 17. 2 (July 2021): 220-239.

“Breaking the Silences about Non-hetero Female Sexuality via Blogging in Iran: ‘The ‘not-woman, not-man’ in Saghi Ghahraman’s Poetry.” Journal of Homosexuality 68. 5 (2021): 830-848. First published online in September 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1661730

“Iranian Armenians in Zoya Pirzad’s Works: Diasporic Transnational Identity.” Persian Media Productions (August 2020): 1-4. (in Persian)

“Zulaikha’s Displaced Desire in Jami’s ‘Yusuf va Zulaikha’,” Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 4.2 (November 2019): 62-77.

“The Fluidity of Iranian-Armenian Identity in Zoya Pirzad’s Things We Left Unsaid.” International Journal of Persian Literature. Iranian Minority Women Special Issue 4. 1 (Fall 2019): 104-122.

“Pirzad’s Diasporic Transnational Subjects in ‘A Day Before Easter’.” International Journal of Persian Literature, Issue 3. 1 (August 2018): 110-132.

“Mapping Out Socio-Cultural Decadence on the Female Body: Sadeq Chubak’s Gowhar in Sange-e Sabur.” Frontier: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Mapping Gendered Violence Special Issue 39. 2 (July 2018): 206-232.

“The Abject Outsider: “The Story of Two Gay Men.” Journal of Iran Namag, Iranian Men and Masculinities Special Issue 3. 1 (spring 2018): 164-188.

“Socially Peripheral, Symbolically Central: Sima in Behrouz Afkhami’s Shokaran.” Asian Cinema Journal, Iranian Female Sexuality Special Issue, Issue 27.2 (fall 2016): 151-163.

“Yusuf’s “Queer” Beauty in Persian Cultural Productions.” The Comparatist, No. 40. 1 (fall 2016): 245-266.

Book Chapters

“Introduction: Bodies, Spaces, and Places,” In Yaghoobi, C. (ed.), The #MeToo Movement in Iran: Reporting Sexual Violence and Harassment. Sex, Marriage and the Family in the Middle East series. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2023, pp. 1-10.

“Shifting Sexual Ideology and Women’s Responses: Iran Between 1850-2010.” In Hoodfar, H. and Lucas-Helie, A. (eds), Sexuality in Muslim Contexts: Restrictions and Resistance, London: Zed Books, 2012, pp. 52-80.