Begin forwarded message: Wed 15 February 2012 1pm - 5.00pm, Silverstone Building Room 309, Sussex University, Falmer Brighton Special Launch symposium for Feminist Review Issue 99: ‘Media Transformations’ edited by Lizzie Thynne (Sussex) and Nadje Al-Ali (SOAS) ‘Gender and neo-liberal entrepreneurship in blogs from the Iranian diaspora’ Sima Shakhsari (University of Houston, Texas) Respondent: Gholam Khiabany (Sussex). 1 pm Lunch in Silverstone Social Space (Top Floor) 1.45 Screening of Blogger’s War (Dir. Farid Haerinejad, CBC, 2005), a documentary about Nikahang Kowsar, once Iran's famous political cartoonist and a well-known blogger, Silverstone Building Room 309. 2.45 Presentation by Sima Shakhsari. Respondent: Gholam Khiabany 3.45 Tea and Coffee 4.15 Open discussion 5.00 Drinks, Silverstone Social Space. Sima Shakhsari received her PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University in 2010 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies programme at the University of Houston. Her dissertation titled Blogging, Belonging and Becoming: Cybergovernmentality and the Production of Gendered and Sexed Diasporic Subjects in Weblogistan is based on a multi-sited online and off-line ethnographic research among Iranian Persian-language bloggers in Washington DC and Toronto. She is the co-author ofWomen, Gender and Sexuality in Historiography of Modern Iran (with Afsaneh Najmabadi and Man Kia) in Historiography and Political Culture in Twentieth-Century Iran (2009). Gholam Khiabany teaches in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Iranian Media: The Paradox of Modernity (Routledge, 2010), and co-author of Blogistan, with Annabelle Sreberny (I.B.Tauris, 2010). Chairs: Lizzie Thynne and Nadje Al-Ali The article to be discussed by Sima Shakhsari, ‘Weblogistan goes to war: representational practices, gendered soldiers and neoliberal entrepreneurship in diaspora’ 99 available free at http://www.feminist-review.com/ where you can also see full details of Feminist Review issue 99. Delegates are encouraged to read Shaksari’s article before the symposium. The article references the film Blogger's War. There is no charge for this event but please register by 9 February for catering purposes with Sarah Maddox,s.maddox@susssex.ac.uk<mailto:s.maddox@susssex.ac.uk> Supported by Feminist Review and the Sussex Centres for Material Digital Culture and for Life History and Life Writing Research Aristea Fotopoulou Research Support Assistant School of Media, Film and Music University of Sussex http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/206365