In the face of a worsening economy as well as a range of restrictions and pressures from the Iranian state, Iranian athletes–including many women–have managed significant achievements on the national and world stage. Yet what may otherwise be triumphant moments for the athletes and the nation are marred by Iran’s domestic and international troubles. More often than not, Iranian athletes find themselves increasingly caught between the rock of an authoritarian state and the hard place of diasporic and foreign agendas which compete to use Iranian sports to further their own interests. Drawing from several recent examples to illustrate these dynamics, this talk also considers why frameworks used for making sense of sports, media, and politics elsewhere in the region may not be as fruitful for understanding the case of Iran. In spite of the grim realities facing Iranian athletes, however, Iranian sports remains an important vehicle for individual expression and social change, and the talk includes a discussion of such positive potentials and accomplishments as well.

Niki Akhavan is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the Catholic University of America. She is the author of Electronic Iran: The Politics of an Online Evolution (Rutgers, 2013) and has also published on Iranian narrative and documentary cinema, Iranian sports and media, as well as on state media productions and policies. In addition to her research, Akhavan is an avid translator, most recently of Mohsen Kadivar's Human rights and reformist Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

This event is part of the CMENAS Fall Colloquium 2023: “The MENA world after a MENA World Cup” 555 Weiser Hall, 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor.

Colloquium questions: cmenas@umich.edu

This series is funded in part by the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies (CMENAS) U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) grant.

To register, go to https://myumi.ch/8eA8n.