Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Norma Claire Moruzzi

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.

MER Article

Karimi, Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran

Pamela Karimi, Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era (New York: Routledge, 2013).

Norma Claire Moruzzi • 4 min read

Current Analysis

The Latest Iranian Distractions

While senior Iranian and US officials are planning bilateral talks [http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2014/06/8432/breaking-us-iran-to-hold-bilateral-nuclear-talks-in-geneva/] over Iran’s nuclear research program [http://www.merip.org/mero/mero041614], the Iranian and world media are distr

Norma Claire Moruzzi • 3 min read

MER Article

Glossary

Gender is commonly understood to be the analysis of the social construction of categories of identity (feminine and masculine), as opposed to the biological determinism of physiological sex (female and male). “Gender” is nonetheless often uncritically conflated with “women,” and physiological or bio

Norma Claire Moruzzi • 1 min read

MER Article

Gender and the Revolutions

How is gender related to revolutions? What is the connection between “gender” and women or, for that matter, between gender and women and men? If gender is generally understood to be the social construction of sexual difference, what explains the differences in gendered identities across cultures or

Norma Claire Moruzzi • 16 min read

Current Analysis

Tehran, June 2009

The morning after Iran’s June 12 presidential election, Iranians booted up their computers to find Fars News, the online mouthpiece of the Islamic Republic’s security apparatus, heralding the dawn of a “third revolution.” Many an ordinary Iranian, and many a Western pundit, had already adopted such

Kaveh Ehsani, Norma Claire Moruzzi, Arang Keshavarzian • 19 min read

MER Article

Tied Up in Tehran

I want to begin with a story. Like the best of stories, it is true.

Norma Claire Moruzzi • 17 min read

MER Article

Paradise Lost, Gone Shopping

Shahram Khosravi, Young and Defiant in Tehran (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

Norma Claire Moruzzi • 6 min read

MER Article

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

In evaluating women’s position in the contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran, it is important to look at the social, as opposed to the legal, aspects of citizenship. In the decades following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iranian society has become resolutely more modern, despite the public face of

Norma Claire Moruzzi, Fatemeh Sadeghi • 12 min read

MER Article

Women's Space/Cinema Space

Post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema has attracted critical attention abroad while constituting a vibrant focus of cultural, narrative and technical experimentation at home. In the politically restrictive context of the Islamic Republic, film has become one of the key ways that sensitive topics are bro

Norma Claire Moruzzi • 13 min read