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    The Color Black
    Enslavement and Erasure in Iran

    Beeta Baghoolizadeh (Author)

    9781478030249

    Paperback / softback, published 22 March 2024

    248 pages, 33 illustrations, including 5 in color
    22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.431 kg

    “In this pathbreaking study, Beeta Baghoolizadeh weaves together a social history of slavery in Iran; a feminist analysis of modern Iranian households and their racial underpinnings; a gendered reading of state policy on emancipation; and an intervention into the study of slavery and its afterlives. The Color Black is a tour de force of research and a beautiful and brilliant contribution to multiple fields.”
    - Sarah M. A.. Gualtieri, author of (Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California)
    “Decentering the dominant lenses in Iranian studies, Beeta Baghoolizadeh advances a new understanding of Iran by showing how its modern construction of history was built upon the erasure of Black Iranians. Rigorously argued, ethically principled, and elegantly written, The Color Black is poised to be one of the most provocative and important new books in Iranian studies and Middle East studies.”
    - Neda Maghbouleh, author of (The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race)
    "A serious, well-researched academic work on a topic that has not been directly addressed in our community worldwide. . . . Through her work, Baghoolizadeh shines a powerful light on an unjustly erased part of Iranian history."
    - Hooshyar Afsar (Peyk) "Beeta Baghoolizadeh has done an excellent job with her book The Color Black. Her research is very meticulous, yet not conveyed in an overwhelming way loaded with information. . . . The Color Black deserves attention for being a pioneering work on this subject which opens the way for future research, debate, and scholarship." - Forough Jahanbakhsh (Islamic Studies) "This well-organized book will lead its readers to reconsider the history, iconography, and historiography of enslavement in Iran. . . . This well-written, beautifully illustrated, and well-annotated book works well for those familiar with Iranian society and history. . . ." - George Michael La Rue (Iranian Studies)

    In The Color Black, Beeta Baghoolizadeh traces the twin processes of enslavement and erasure of Black people in Iran during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She illustrates how geopolitical changes and technological advancements in the nineteenth century made enslaved East Africans uniquely visible in their servitude in wealthy and elite Iranian households. During this time, Blackness, Africanness, and enslavement became intertwined-and interchangeable-in Iranian imaginations. After the end of slavery in 1929, the implementation of abolition involved an active process of erasure on a national scale, such that a collective amnesia regarding slavery and racism persists today. The erasure of enslavement resulted in the erasure of Black Iranians as well. Baghoolizadeh draws on photographs, architecture, theater, circus acts, newspapers, films, and more to document how the politics of visibility framed discussions around enslavement and abolition during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this way, Baghoolizadeh makes visible the people and histories that were erased from Iran and its diaspora.

    List of Illustrations  ix
    Note on Transliteration  xi
    Note on Photography  xiii
    Acknowledgments  xv
    Introduction  1
    Part I. Enslavement  25
    1. Geographies of Blackness and Enslavement  27
    2. Limits in Family and Photography  44
    3. Portraits of Eunuchs and Their Afterlives  67
    Part II. Erasure  93
    4. Histories of a Country That Never Enslaved  95
    5. Origins of Blackface in the Absence of Black People  115
    6. Memories and a Genre of Distortion  133
    Epilogue: Black Life in the Aftermath of a Forced Invisibility  149
    Notes  163
    Bibliography  203
    Index  221
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