The Global Arts + Humanities Graduate Team Fellowships are financial awards made on the basis of academic merit through a division-wide competition. These fellowships are given to recognize the cross-disciplinary aspirations and accomplishments of graduate students in the division of arts and humanities. The fellowship competition is open to students whose projects engage cross-disciplinary critical and/or creative practices as well as students who seek to foster the development of participatory networks with local Columbus communities. The Global Arts & Humanities have now announced thier 2019-20 Fellowship awardees and our own Ehsan Estiri was among the worthy students slected for this award: https://globalartsandhumanities.osu.edu/news/2019-2020-gtf 

Ehsan Estiri (PhD’20), Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Project Title: “Talking to America: Iranian Immigrants’ Public Events and American Political and Media Discourses”

Project Description: Iranian immigrants have been the subject of stigmatization, suspicion and discrimination in American political and media discourses since their first wave of migration to the United States in the late 1970s. My dissertation investigates the ways in which the largest Iranian immigrant community in the world living in Los Angeles counters these discourses and claims spaces within the American public. Based on ethnographic data from my fieldwork, I argue that the community achieves this by holding a wide range of public events, ranging from Islamic processions to Iranian New Year celebrations, in a manner that challenges American perceptions of Muslims and Iranians and legitimizes the community’s presence in the U.S., reducing its spatial and social isolation. I study these public events through an interdisciplinary lens that connects theories and methods from cultural anthropology, folkloristics, event studies, migration studies, media studies and ethnographic filmmaking.