Join us for our next City-Wide Café Society for a tour of a stunning photography exhibit, a thought-provoking presentation, and an engaging discussion! We will explore Rania Matar’s photography collection Women of Islam in the Aftermath of War. Matar’s work focuses on Lebanon and is described as “giving a voice to people who have been forgotten or misunderstood.” After touring the exhibit, Norma Claire Moruzzi, Director of the International Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will share opening remarks to frame the Café Society facilitated discussions. She will help us consider the images in Matar’s photos and weave together the meanings and impact of women’s experience of war. During the Café Society discussion, participants will have the opportunity to share your own reflections and engage in dialogue with other people from all over the city. More About Our Speaker: This event is part of The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council’s Café Society program, which is designed to foster a more robust civil society, more cohesive and interactive communities, greater media literacy, and a more informed and engaged citizenry through weekly coffee shop conversations about contemporary social issues. This event is co-sponsored by the Chicago Cultural Centerand the Arab American Action Network. Free and open to the public. Reservations are required. Call 312.422.5580 or e-mail events@prairie.org to make your reservation.
Norma Claire Moruzzi is Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender and Women’s Studies and Director of the International Studies Program at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is the author of Speaking through the Mask: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Social Identity , and has published scholarly articles about Iranian cinema, politicized veiling in France and Algeria, contemporary feminist approaches to female circumcision, and nineteenth century intersections of religious revivalism and imperial policy. Since 1998, she has been regularly conducting field-work in Iran, as well as teaching there and working with local students and activists. Her current project is a book analyzing transformations in Iranian women’s lives since the 1979 Revolution, tentatively titled Tied Up in Tehran: Women, Social Change, and the Politics of Daily Life.