Antonio Gramsci Studies: Special Presentation by Negar Mottahedeh

On Sunday, May 25, the Gramsci Studies group will hear a presentation by Negar Mottahedeh on her book Whisper Tapes: Kate Millett in Iran. Millett was already an icon of American feminism when she went to Iran in 1979. She arrived just weeks after the Iranian Revolution, to join Iranian women in marking International Women’s Day. Intended as a day of celebration, the event turned into a week of protests. Millett, armed with film equipment and a cassette deck to record everything around her, found herself in the middle of demonstrations for women’s rights and against the mandatory veil. Listening to the revolutionary soundscape of Millett’s audio tapes, Mottahedeh offers a new interpretive guide to Revolutionary Iran, its slogans, habits, and women’s movement—a movement that, many claim, Millett never came to understand. Whisper Tapes re-introduces Millett’s historic visit to Iran and lays out the nature of her encounter with the Iranian women’s movement.

The 2025 Gramsci Study Sessions will read and explore from:

1. Selections from the Prison Notebooks
2. Selections from Cultural Writings
3. Selections from Political Writings
4. Gramsci’s writings on international politics, as they relate to contemporary issues and conflicts.

Participants may join in at any time. We share a vast archive of articles and secondary sources on Gramsci research and application of Gramsci’s approach to specific realities of our interest.

Piruz Alemi will facilitate this new program. In addition, all participants have the opportunity to lead discussions, and we transcribe, edit, archive and share our discussion commentaries among the group. In effect, we collectively will write and apply Gramsci’s approach to international issues of our interest.