The Pedagogy of Visibility: Constructs and Contests of Iranianness in a Community-Organized School in a Large Southern U.S. City

Abstract

This article highlights how a community-organized language school that teaches Persian serves as a site of diasporic cultural production. Specifically, I examine how the school serves as a site to teach the Persian language, delimit cultural meanings, and facilitate a sense of belonging and community membership among a diverse group of parents and children. This study also endeavors to situate the views of parents, teachers, and students in this exploratory case study within a larger history of diasporic Iranian experience in the United States. In doing so, the analysis shows that community education efforts remain vital to the understanding and exploration of notions of identity and culture that may be socially contested and produced within diasporic communities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply grateful to all of the parents, students, and educators who participated in this study.

Notes

1. ¹The National Iranian American Council has consistently reported on this issue in its community outreach efforts.

2. ²Personal communication with Vahid, board member of community organization. July 25, 2012

3. ³Conversation with Tara, school director. June 24, 2012

4. ⁴Ibid.

5. ⁵Student performance observed during Chaharshanbeh Suri Event, March 14, 2012.

6. ⁶I choose to highlight Pegah and Massoumeh’s interactions in this section because they emerged as the dominant speakers during the focus group, and their fellow participants’ views tended to fall somewhere between their positions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roozbeh Shirazi

Roozbeh Shirazi is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include globalization, migration and education, youth citizenship and political subjectivity, and education and social change in the Middle East and North Africa.