Dance for Life | Dr. Nahid Siamdoust | TEDxUTAustin

On the occasion of Spring Equinox – Nowruz in the Persian tradition – let’s “wash our eyes” and see the world anew. Dr. Nahid Siamdoust talks about the significance of the recent phenomenon of viral dance videos in Iran and traces their history. At a time of global political despair, these dance memes issue an important call to life. Let’s engage more actively in our country’s foreign politics and elect leaders who honor our common humanity and answer this call to life. Nahid Siamdoust has been writing about Iran for over twenty years. She is an assistant professor of media and Middle East studies at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran (Stanford, 2017). Nahid earned her Ph.D. from Oxford, was a Yarshater Postdoctoral Associate at Yale, and a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School. She was an Iran correspondent for Time and a Middle East correspondent for *Al Jazeera International*. Her recent work appears in *The New York Times*, *New Lines Magazine*, *Foreign Policy*, BBC, and NPR. In 2023, she launched the podcast “Woman, Life, Freedom: All in on Iran” about the 2022/23 uprising. She is currently working on a book about publics and the politics of joy in Islamic Iran. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx