Golbarg Bashi

Golbarg Bashi (Persian: گلبرگ باشی‎‎), born in Ahvaz, Iran, is an Iranian-Swedish feminist professor of Iranian Studies at Rutgers University in the US. Among other topics, Bashi has published works and given talks about human rights in the Middle East and the situation of women in Iran. Two of her famous works include, Feminist waves in the Iranian Green Tsunami (2009); From One Third World Woman to Another: A Conversation with Gayatri Spivak (2010) and Eyewitness history: Ayatollah Montazeri (2006).

Golbarg Bashi was born in Iran, raised in Sweden, and educated at the Universities of Manchester and Bristol and obtained her doctorate degree from Columbia University in New York City. Her doctoral research focused on a feminist critique of the human rights discourse in Iran. She teaches courses on methodologies in Middle Eastern Studies, various aspects of gender in the Muslim world and representations of race, gender and ethnicity in “Western” media and popular culture (including cinema and art), medieval and modern Middle Eastern history in the immediate geographical, political, and cultural contexts of the Arab and Muslim world, viewed through postcolonial theory.

Bashi has been a member of the Green Party of Sweden where she was elected in 2002 as an executive member of the party's Women's Committee. She was also selected as a candidate for the Greens in the Swedish municipal elections for the city of Kramfors in 2002.

She is also a visual artist and a member of Professional Women Photographers, Inc. She has published her photographs in the New York Times, Aljazeera English, CNN, BBC News, Amnesty International, Jadaliyya, and Electronic Intifada, etc. She is married to Columbia University professor, Hamid Dabashi. She is an atheist.

Brainquake

In April 2010, Golbarg Bashi launched Brainquake together with Duke University's Negar Mottahedeh. Brainquake was a criticism of the Boobquake event, which Bashi argued was an unhelpful and inappropriate way of drawing attention to legitimate issues. The issue at hand was a statement by Tehran's leader in Friday Prayer, saying that women who wear immodest clothing and behaved promiscuously caused earthquakes. Bashi and Brainquake advocates argued that instead of highlighting one's physical differences, women should show off their CVs and lists of accomplishments.