The Programs in Anthropology are pleased to announce that Dr. Amina Tawasil is joining us as lecturer for the 2017-2018 academic year!
Dr. Amina Tawasil holds a PhD in Anthropology and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Master's degree in Social Sciences in Education from Stanford University. She was the first faculty hire at the International Studies Institute, University of New Mexico (2015-2017). Previously, she was the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Anthropology (2013-2015). Her current research focus is on the intersection of women, Islamic education and the state. She completed ethnographic research on seminarian women (zanan-e howzeh) in Tehran to examine the different ways agency and empowerment may be analyzed. As a Fellow, she co-organized a closed-workshop entitled "The Power of Women's Islamic Education" for the Center of the Critical Study of Social Difference as part of the Women Creating Change project, Columbia University. Her research interests specific to the Middle East are women’s mobility, women’s Islamic education, and gender. Her general research interests are notions of slow work, apprenticeship as education, labor migration, mass incarceration and human trafficking.
Academic Publications
-"Reading as Practice: The Howzevi (Seminarian) Women in Iran and Clair de Lune", Anthropology and Education Quarterly (in-review)
-"Towards the Ideal Revolutionary Shi'i Woman: The Howzevi (Seminarian), the Requisites of Marriage and Islamic Education in Iran", Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 13(2015)
-“The Howzevi (Seminarian) Women in Iran: Constituting and Reconstituting Paths”. Dissertation Abstract, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 11(2). July 2015.
Web-based Publications
"Contextualizing Exclusion: Lessons from Kambis", Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art, World. September 16, 2015.
"Buses in South and North Tehran: Education and Schooling", Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art, World. August 12, 2015.
“Measuring Up: Where Has the ‘I’ Gone in My Writing?”, Anthropology News. October 2014.
“Islamic Education and the Howzevi (Seminarian) Women of Pirouzi-Tehran”, Anthropology News. June 2013.
“On the Edge of Protest in Tehran: Discontinuing, Shifting Boundaries”, Anthropology News. January 2013.
“Down on Vali Asr: Encounters with Tehran's Street Children”, PBS Frontline Tehran Bureau. May 2012.
Fellowships / Grants
New Mexico Humanities Council Grant, 2017
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, 2013-2015
American Association of University Women, 2012
IREX-Youth & Religious Education, (alternate), Dushanbe, Tajikistan, 2012
Earth Institute Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4) Fellowship, 2011
Middle East Institute Fellowship, Columbia University, 2011
Zankel Urban Fellowship, 2008
Stanford University Ettinger Foundation Fellowship, 2007
Photography Award
111th American Anthropological Association Photography Competition, Category: Place. Title: 33 Bridges, Standing, Still, on a Fluid of Emotions – Esfahan, Iran. 2012