Neda Maghbouleh: The Limits of Whiteness

Dr. Neda Maghbouleh is Associate Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair in Migration, Race, and Identity at the University of Toronto. An international expert on racial identity formation with a strategic focus on SWANA immigrants and refugees, she is Principal Investigator of RISE Team, a major 5-year study of integration and wellbeing among Syrian newcomer refugees. Her award-winning first book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race was published in 2017 by Stanford University Press. Born in New York City and raised in Portland, Oregon, Neda now lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and six-year-old daughter, Neelu.

This conversation will feature the discussant, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Director of Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame, and be moderated by a Niloofar Adnani, MGA graduate student with the Keough School of Global Affairs. Event page can be found here.

Niloofar Adnani holds a BSc in mechanical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology. She also has completed graduate-level coursework in women’s studies at Allameh Tabataba’i University. While volunteering for various nongovernmental organizations, Niloofar developed analytical skills and gained an understanding of intersectional oppression and structural inequality. She has organized educational camps for students in underserved parts of Iran, raised funds for school construction projects, and supported the production of handicrafts by the Baluchi people, a nomadic minority group. She also is an active translator for Harasswatch, an Iran-based group that aims to mitigate the normalization of harassment and assault in public spaces. Niloofar’s first goal as a socialist feminist and graduate student is to stand against discrimination. She is the recipient of a Donald & Marilyn Keough Fellowship.

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is the author of Call Me Zebra, winner of the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award, the John Gardner Fiction Award and long listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. She is a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and a Whiting Writers Award Winner. Her novel, Savage Tongues, is forthcoming in 2021. She is the Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Notre Dame and a Fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance, launched by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, is a research collective and lecture series co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and housed at the newly launched Initiative on Race and Resilience, directed by Mark Sanders, Professor of English and Africana Studies. The series focuses on contemporary literature, film, and visual art that has been shaped by revolutionary and resistance movements, decolonization, migration, class and economic warfare, communal and state-sanctioned violence, and human rights violations. We aim to theorize new modes of contemporary literary and artistic resistance across national borders and to amplify the voices of scholars, artists, and writers of color whose lived experience is instrumental in forging new alliances across formal, linguistic and national boundaries.