Middle Eastern Studies, the Center for Curatorial Studies, the L&L Division, and the Human Rights Project Presents
Reckoning with Ghosts: The Iran-Iraq War in Persian and Arabic Fiction Today
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
CCS Classroom
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Although sometimes called “a forgotten war” by pundits, the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) was the longest two-state war of the 20th century. Since 1980, for a variety of reasons, writers, filmmakers, and visual artists from both countries have taken it up in their works. This talk explains why, three and half decades after its conclusion, this war remains a major topic for writers of Persian and Arabic fiction, and how Iranian and Iraqi writers have transformed the literatures of this war from authoritarian propaganda into literatures of mourning and resistance, connecting the war's afterlives to some of the most salient social and political challenges the two countries face today.
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Curatorial Studies, Literature program, and the Human Rights Project. It is organized in conjunction with All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group at the Hessel Museum.
Amir Moosavi is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University-Newark. He researches and teaches about modern Persian and Arabic literatures and the cultural histories of the modern Middle East, with a focus on Iran, Iraq and the Levant. His book Dust That Never Settles: Literary Afterlives of the Iran-Iraq War considers how Iraqi and Iranian writers have wrestled with representing the Iran-Iraq War and its legacy, from wartime to the present.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: CCS Classroom
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