Nahid Siamdoust

Areas of Research/Interest

Political implications of cultural production in Iran and the Middle East, The impact of new media on culture and society in Iran and the Middle East, Media and popular culture in Iran and the Middle East, The public sphere in the Middle East, Subcultures in Iran and the Middle East

Education

D.Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford
M.A. in International Affairs, Columbia University
B.A. in Political Science, Barnard College

Dissertation: "Iran's Troubled Tunes: Music as Politics in the Islamic Republic"

Research Interests:

  • Political implications of cultural production in Iran and the Middle East
  • The impact of new media on culture and society in Iran and the Middle East
  • Media and popular culture in Iran and the Middle East
  • The public sphere in the Middle East
  • Subcultures in Iran and the Middle East

Recent Publications:

Book:

  • ‘Soundtrack of the Post-Revolution: Music as Politics in Iran" (forthcoming from Stanford University Press)

Academic Articles:

  • "Neither Islamic nor a Republic: Discourses in Music" in Cultural revolution in Iran: contemporary popular culture in the Islamic Republic, Annbelle Sreberny & Masoumeh Torfeh (eds.), London: I.B. Tauris, 2013.
  • "From Heavenly to Earthly Love: The re-emergence and evolution of pop music in the Islamic Republic" in Social Change in Post-Khomeini Iran, Mahmood Monshipouri & Kamran Mehrava (eds.) – forthcoming
  • "Blurring the lines between the public and the private: Tehran’s soundscape as a contested public sphere" in Divercities: Contested Space and Urban Identities in Beirut, Cairo and Tehran, Nadia von Maltzahn & Monique Bellan (eds.) – forthcoming

Book Reviews:

  • International Journal of Middle East Studies Review of Pardis Mahdavi’s Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009); 2011, vol. 43, Issue 01
  • "Iran’s Past and Future," Review of Homa Katouzian’s The Persians (New Haven, Conn: Yale Univ Press, 2009) in The National Newspaper (18 Mar 2010)
  • International Journal of Communication Review of Mehdi Semati’s (ed) Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State (London: Routledge, 2007); 2008, vol. 2

Biography: 

Before joining The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University as a visiting research scholar in the Fall of 2014, Nahid was a Faculty Associate at the University of Oxford, where she taught "History and Politics of the Middle East" and "Modern Iran" to undergraduates, and "The Public Sphere in the Middle East" to graduate students. She obtained her doctorate in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, in 2013. Her dissertation titled “Iran’s Troubled Tunes: Music as Politics in the Islamic Republic” won the prizes for best dissertation in her field from both the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies as well as the Middle East Studies Association of America in 2014. It is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2016. Nahid holds a B.A. in Political Science and Art History, and a Master of International Affairs – from Barnard College and Columbia University, respectively. Before returning to academia and concurrently with her studies, Nahid worked as a full-time Iran and Middle East based journalist for TIME Magazine, Der Spiegel, The Los Angeles Times and Al Jazeera English TV. Her academic research focuses on the intersection of politics and various modes of cultural production (music included) in Iran and the wider Middle East. In 2016, she will teach the course “Middle East Media” to NYU undergraduates.