Shahla Talebi is a social cultural anthropologist, and associate professor of religious studies at Arizona State University. As a native of Iran, she has lived through the Revolution of 1979, and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Both events have informed her research and scholarship, which revolve around questions of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, revolution, war, violence, memory, memorialization, history, and trauma with a concentration on Iran and the Middle East. Her work tackles issues related to imprisonment, torture, madness and death, as well as gender and sexuality, with a particular interest in body, language, and metaphors. She is the author of the award-winning book, Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran, and has published on the aforementioned topics in academic journals and edited books. Dr. Talebi was a national humanities research fellow in 2017-2018, while completing her second book manuscript provisionally titled Contested Martyrdoms in Post-revolutionary Iran.
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