This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States

By: Manijeh Moradian

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Synopsis: In This Flame Within Manijeh Moradian revises conventional histories of Iranian migration to the United States as a post-1979 phenomenon characterized by the flight of pro-Shah Iranians from the Islamic Republic and recounts the experiences of Iranian foreign students who joined a global movement against US imperialism during the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on archival evidence and in-depth interviews with members of the Iranian Students Association, Moradian traces what she calls “revolutionary affects”—the embodied force of affect generated by experiences of repression and resistance—from encounters with empire and dictatorship in Iran to joint organizing with other student activists in the United States. Moradian theorizes “affects of solidarity” that facilitated Iranian student participation in a wide range of antiracist and anticolonial movements and analyzes gendered manifestations of revolutionary affects within the emergence of Third World feminism. Arguing for a transnational feminist interpretation of the Iranian Student Association’s legacy, Moradian demonstrates how the recognition of multiple sources of oppression in the West and in Iran can reorient Iranian diasporic politics today.