Claiming the Space: Stories of Resilience and Resistance


Rezvaneh Erfani, University of Alberta

This paper is based on interviews with five Iranian Canadian women who are faculty members in the fields of sociology and women and gender studies. These five women have received their undergraduate education from departments of sociology in major universities in Iran, where the majority of faculty are men and topics of gender and sexuality are highly monitored by the state. They are also from different generations of university graduates with different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. All of them have moved to Canada as international students at a young age and have received their PhDs from Canadian universities in the field of sociology. I ask them questions on their experiences of receiving sociological training in Iran and Canada. Through their narratives, I reflect on how their experiences of immigration to and integration in Canada and stories of resilience and resistance impacted and informed their socio-political thought and practice both in Iranian and Canadian academic spheres as all these women are actively participating in producing Persian academic literature. In my interviews, I invite these women to tell their stories of being a minority, once as a female sociology student in a male dominated sphere and now as a woman of color sociologist in a Canadian academic institution. I also invite them to reflect on their experiences of inclusion and exclusion, identity complexities, and their insights on the current women, life, freedom movement in Iran.

This paper will be presented at the following session: