2022-23 Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship

Parichehr Kazemi, Political Science, “Visual Protest Movements: How Social Media Images Challenge Authoritarian State Power in Iran’s ‘My Stealthy Freedom’ Movement.”

Abstract: “Since 2014, women have challenged Iran’s strict modesty mandates by unveiling in public spaces to document and share their acts of defiance across social media,” Kazemi says in her project abstract. “In response, the Iranian government has arrested several activists and imposed mandatory ‘Re-education’ classes for violators, showing that the content represents enough of a challenge to the regime to inspire severe repression. By bringing into question the disjuncture between civic activism and state response, my research suggests a new type of social movement that leverages the unique affordances of visual-based social media platforms to challenge state power.” Kazemi’s dissertation “explores the dynamic interactions between oppositional movements and authoritarian regimes over time in a way that reveals processes of learning, innovation, and tactical evolution on the part of both movement and state actors.”