On 5 September Professor Dominic Parviz Brookshaw from the University of Oxford will give a keynote lecture at our conference ‘Limits, Boundaries, and Transgression in Literatures and Languages of the Persianate World’.
In his keynote lecture entitled “I Am That Woman: gendered transgression in the feminine mufākhara from Padishah Khatun, through Tahira Qurrat al-‘Ayn, to Simin Bihbahani”, Professor Brookshaw will examine a chain of self-praise poems (sing. mufākhara) penned by female poets writing in Persian that stretches from the late thirteenth century to the early twenty-first century. The mufākhara, a lyric genre normally reserved for vaunting about one’s literary prowess, is used by both amateur and professional Persian women poets not only to boast about their exemplary eloquence that rivals (or even surpasses) that of their male peers, but also as a platform to express their resolve to transgress the limitations imposed upon them by men. At the hands of women of political power (e.g. Padishah Khatun; strangled, 1295) and/or those of elite social status (e.g. Tahira Qurrat al-‘Ayn; martyred, 1852), the gynocentric self-praise lyric serves as space for the assertion of feminine authority. With Simin Bihbahani (1927-2014), the leading woman poet of late twentieth-century Iran, the mufākhara morphs into a defiant call for women’s voices to be heard over the din of state-sponsored censorship and age-old institutional misogyny that would see them silenced.
To see the programme of the conference click here.
You are all welcome to join!
Location
Utrecht University, Academy Building (Belle van Zuylen Hall), Domplein 29, Utrecht
Date
Thursday 5 September 2024, from 9.15 – 10.15 am
Registration
Please register below to attend this conference. The lectures will not be livestreamed and can only be attended on location at Utrecht University. Registration is compulsory as seats are limited. Entrance is free!