8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Welcome: Monroe Price, University of Pennsylvania
Keynote address: Don Mitchell, Syracuse University: Spaces for Representation: On the Political Necessity of Public
Space
9:30-11:00 Reshaped “publics,” Reshaped “space”
Rudabeh Pakravan, UC Berkeley: Territory Jam: Tehran
Roxanne Varzi, UC Irvine: Spaced Out: Visual Shifts and Life in Contemporary Tehran
Taraneh Meskhani, Harvard University: Where is the Boundary between Public and Private Spaces in Tehran?
Moderated by ASC Doctoral Candidate Andrew Crocco
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11:30-1:00 Public Space, Global Media
Martijn de Waal, University of Amsterdam: From Nevski Prospect to Facebook and Back to Tahrir: New Media, the
Urban Public Space and Urban Publics
Mona El Khafif, California College of the Arts: Staged Urbanism: Social Networking and the Reinvention of the
Contemporary Agora
Wazhmah Osman, NYU: New Media, Old Media? A Comparative Analysis of Television and the Internet in the Social
Uprisings of Iran and Afghanistan
Moderated by ASC Doctoral Student Sun-Ha Hong
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-3:30 Protests and Public Space
Patrick O’Neil, University of Puget Sound: Center, Periphery, and Political Change: Regional and Ethnic Spaces in Iran
Carolyn Marvin, University of Pennsylvania: Subduing Tibet: Notes on Han Enclosure at Three Ethno-sites in Lhasa
Reza Masoudi Nejad, SOAS, University of London: Where is my vote? Where is Our Public Space? The Production of
Public Space in Post-Election Tehran
Moderated by ASC Doctoral Student Kevin Gotkin
3:30-3:45 Coffee break
3:45-5:15 Art, Aesthetics and Public Space
Homa Farjadi, University of Pennsylvania: Production of Informal Public Space
Marwan Kraidy, University of Pennsylvania: Graffiti, Media and Cultural Policy: Beirut as a Contested “Creative City”
Anna Vanzan, University of Milano: Gendered Spaces? Women as Art Gallery Managers in Tehran
Moderated by ASC Doctoral Student Sara Mourad
BIOGRAPHIES
Homa Farjadi teaches advanced architectural studios and heads Penn's study abroad program in London. Prior to her
appointment at Penn she taught at the AA School of Architecture (1980-87), GSD Harvard University (1989-96) and has
held chaired visiting professorships at Yale, Penn and Edinburgh universities and visiting professorships at Columbia
University and University of Virginia. She is the principal in her practice of Farjadi Architects since its inception in 1987.
The work of her office has been exhibited and published internationally. Her projects have received numerous prizes in
international design competitions and awards of distinction for built work.
Marwan M. Kraidy is a Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. A
scholar of global communication and an expert on Arab media and politics, Prof. Kraidy was previously a Fellow at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the founding director of the Arab Media and Public Life (AMPLE)
project at American University, both in Washington D.C. In 2006, Prof. Kraidy was Scholar-in-residence in the Scholars
Program in Culture and Communication at Annenberg. Kraidy’s scholarly interests center on the role of media
institutions in shaping social experiences of modernity in the non-West. He has written extensively on how local and
national societies cope with cultural globalization.
Mona El Khafif is an Assoc. Professor at CCA Architecture, Project Coordinator of the CCA URBANlab, and since fall 2012
the Assoc. Chair for the college's new 2 year post-professional Master of Architecture in Urban Design and Landscape
program. She received her professional degree in Architecture at the RWTH in Aachen/ Germany and her doctoral
degree in Urban Design at the TU Vienna/ Austria. Her current research operates at multiple scales, examining the
interdisciplinary aspects of urban regeneration strategies, place branding, and urban ecologies. At CCA Mona El Khafif
leads the urban design curriculum and teaches urban research seminars, large scale urban and architectural design
studios, and international programs.
Carolyn Marvin is the Frances Yates Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Communication in
the Late Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1988) and with David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and
the American Flag (1999).
Taraneh Meshkani Taraneh Meshkani is a Doctor of Design student at Harvard Graduate School of Design. She
completed her Masters of Architecture from John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the
University of Toronto and has a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Azad University of Tehran. Taraneh is also a
doctorate fellow in the Harvard Graduate Consortium on Energy and Environment. During her studies in Toronto, she
received the Professional Experience Program Award and received internships at two major architectural firms,
Morphosis Architects and Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. She is the recipient of the 2009-2010 Toronto Society of
Architects scholarship. Awarded to a graduating student of the MArch or MUD program, this scholarship rewards a
thesis project that demonstrates an innovative approach to city building and urban form. Taraneh has also received the
Canadian Architect student Award of Excellence of the 2010 for her thesis project, given each year to architects and
architectural graduates for buildings in the design stage. Taraneh is currently working on social media as a new
networked public sphere.
Don Mitchell is a Distinguished Professor of Geography in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He is the author
of The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (1996); Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction
(2000); and The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (2003); The People’s Property? Power,
Politics, and the Public, with Lynn Staeheli (2008), and They Saved the Crops: Landscape, Labor, and the Struggle for
Industrial Farming in Bracero-Era California (2012). Mitchell is a recipient of a MacArthur, Fulbright, and Guggenheim
Fellowships and was the 2012 recipient of the Retzius Medal in Gold, one of the Vega Awards, given by the King of
Sweden on Vega Day, April 24. Mitchell is the founder of the People’s Geography Project and serves on the advisory
board of Syracuse Community Geography.
Reza Masoudi Nejad is a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
Nejad is also an architect and urban morphologist, interested in the interaction between society and space with a focus
on the broad idea of ritual. Reza received his PhD from the Bartlett, UCL, University of London (2009), then was a
Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG), Germany (200911). Reza has carried out research on Muharram processions in Iran and India. He was recently awarded an Alexander
von Humboldt (AvH) research fund for two years, and will be an AvH fellow at The Centre of Modern Oriental Studies
(ZMO, Berlin) beginning in May of 2013.
Patrick O'Neil is a Professor of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound. His interests in are
authoritarianism and democratization. Past work has focused on Eastern Europe and the transition from communism
with a more recent focus is on the Middle East, specifically Iranian domestic politics and foreign policy, as well as the
politics of political Shi'ism outside of Iran. O’Neil explores a secondary interest in Israel/Palestine. His published works
include Revolution from Within:The Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party 'Reform Circles' and the Collapse of Communism,
and the edited volumes Post-Communism and the Media in Eastern Europe and Communicating Democracy: Media and
Political Transitions. He is also the author of Essentials of Comparative Politics, currently in its fourth edition.
Wazhmah Osman is a visiting scholar at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies (NYU) and an adjunct
instructor in the department of Media, Culture, and Communication (NYU) where she defended her dissertation
"Thinking Outside the Box: Television and the Afghan Culture Wars" in the Spring of 2012. Her broad area of interest is
cultural contestations as they manifest into politically charged debates and social movements in mediated public
spheres. More specifically, her research looks at the politics of representation and visual culture around issues and
imagery pertaining to "The War On Terror" and "Afghan Women" and how they reverberate globally and locally in her
native Afghanistan. With the support of the Social Science Research Council, she conducted dissertation fieldwork in
Afghanistan and surrounding countries over the 2009-2010 academic year. While her research is primarily a production
study, she also engaged with audiences and content analysis of programming to assess the everyday influence of new
media forms.
Rudabeh Pakravan is a designer and educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the principal of Rudabeh
Pakravan Studio, an architecture and design firm. Her primary interests are how architecture operates at the scale of the
city, and how hidden networks can affect urban space. Her project Instant City, a study of alternative futures for Dubai,
was a part of the “Politics of Space and Place” conference at the University of Brighton, and most recently she has
collaborated on Little, Big, a series of mile marking devices along the Pan-American Highway. Solar Veil, her design for
the Land Art Generator Project, is being published in The Time is Now: Public Art of the Sustainable City this summer. She
teaches architecture design studio at the University of California, Berkeley.
Monroe E. Price is the director of the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School. He is also the
Joseph and Sadie Danciger Professor of Law and Director of the Howard M. Squadron Program in Law, Media and
Society at the Cardozo School of Law. He directs the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research in London
and is the Chair of the Center for Media and Communication Studies of the Central European University in Budapest.
rofessor Price founded the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at Oxford University and remains a
Research Fellow there. He chairs the Center for Media and Communications Studies at Central European University, a
project instituted and encouraged by CGCS.
Anna Vanzan (Venice 1955) holds a Degree in Oriental Languages and Cultures (University Of Ca’ Foscari, Venice) and a
Ph.D in Near Eastern Studies (New York University).Though she is interested in the Middle East in general, her research
is focused especially on Iran, Central Asia and the subcontinent (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Muslim India). She has been
working in gender studies with particular interest in Muslim societies. She is editor of the Italian journal Afriche&Orienti
and regularly lectures in various Italian institutions on issues of multiculturalism. She is currently teaching Arabic Culture
at the University of Milano and is visiting lecturer at the European Master M.I.M. Ca’ Foscari University where she
teaches Gender and Islamic thought.
Roxanne Varzi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine. She has a Ph.D. in
Social Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University and was the recipient of the first Fulbright to Iran since the
Revolution, and the youngest Distinguished Senior Iranian Visiting Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. She
has also held a Woodrow Wilson Post-Doctoral Fellowship at New York University and a Markle Foundation New Media
Fellow, at the Centre for Law, Media and Society, Wolfson College, Oxford University and at the Wissenschaftskolleg and
the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (The Center for Advanced Studies) in Berlin. Her most recent fellowship
was at the IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna, Austria.
She has published essays and articles in The Annals of Political and Social Science, Feminist Review, Public Culture,
American Anthropologist, Eastern Art Report and the London Review of Books as well as contributing to two anthologies
of Iranian-American short stories and her film, Plastic Flowers Never Die is distributed with DER.
Martijn de Waal is an assistant professor at the department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. One of his
main research interests is the role of digital media in the construction of urban publics. He is also the co-founder of
TheMobileCity.nl an international think tank and research platform on new media and urban culture. One of its most
recent events was an international conference and workshop called Social Cities of Tomorrow, in which the social city
was envisioned as an alternative to the Smart City-paradigm. His most recent publications include The Ideas and Ideals in
Urban Media Theory published in the book From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen, as well as a contribution to the book
Toward the Sentient City edited by Mark Shepard, both published by MIT Press. In the spring his new book The City as
Interface will be published by NAi010 Publishers.