Location update: This event will take place in Room A97 of the Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building.

About

"The Dawn is Too Far" documents some of the stories and experiences of Iranian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area, sharing the challenges, contributions, and visions of members of this unique community within the context of a much longer US-Iran history. This 55 min. documentary film will be screened at Princeton, followed by a Q & A session with the film's co-director, Dr. Persis Karim.

Bio

Persis Karim (Co-Director/Co-Producer) holds the Neda Nobari Endowed Chair and serves as the Director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she is also a professor in the Department of Comparative & World Literature. She is the editor of three anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature:Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers; Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora: and, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian Americans. 

Karim has also published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora culture and has edited special issues of Iranian Studies, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States, and Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies.  “The Dawn is Too Far” is Karim’s first film, and she sees it as part of her long commitment to sharing the stories, experiences, and voices of the Iranian diaspora community in California and beyond. Prior to coming to San Francisco State University, she was a professor in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State University for 17 years, where she founded the Persian Studies program and served as coordinator for the Middle Eastern Studies minor. While at San Jose State, she produced and directed, “Iranian American Voices of Silicon Valley: A Digital Storytelling Project,” made possible with support from Cal Humanities. With the support of an National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2019, she instigated the Iranian-American Digital Archive project.