"Reading Lolita in Tehran" Redux, NY, 2012; a Supplemental Podcast for Social Research

This is a supplemental episode of our podcast series, “The Podcast for Social Research.” While preparing for our previous podcast, I (Ajay) came across a piece that Gideon Lewis-Kraus had written critiquing an article by Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi which, in turn, was a critique of Azar Nafisi's bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran. I was quite taken aback by Gideon's piece both because (full-disclosure) Dabashi is my adviser but, perhaps far more importantly, I agreed so vehemently with Dabashi's original critique. Being the kind of institution we are, where we want to promote transparency and open, critical dialogue, we thought the best thing to do was to record a separate, brief podcast where Gideon and I got to revisit this episode, some six years later. What ensues is, we hope, an interesting discussion about politics, aesthetics, war, imperialism, writing-as-art, writing-as-industry, and a host of other issues. We have an appropriately brief Notations section