Refocus, The Films of Shirin Neshat
Edited by: Maryam Ghorbankarimi and Mazyar Mahan
Bringing together leading and emerging scholars, this volume traces Neshat’s evolution from Women of Allah to her feature films Women Without Men, Looking for Oum Kulthum and Land of Dreams, situating her within global debates on feminism, exile and transnational aesthetics.
Book: Mahan, Mazyar, and Maryam Ghorbankarimi, eds. ReFocus: The Films of Shirin Neshat. Edinburgh University Press, 2026.
Book Chapters:
- Mahan, Mazyar. “Articulating the Feminist ‘I’: Shirin Neshat and the Politics of Authorship.” In ReFocus: The Films of Shirin Neshat, edited by Maryam Ghorbankarimi and Mazyar Mahan. Edinburgh University Press, 2026.
- Mahan, Mazyar. “Excavating Silenced Histories: Postmemory, Inherited Trauma, and State Violence in Born in Evin.” In Film and Genocide, edited by Kristi M. Wilson & Tomás F. Crowder-Taraborrelli. University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming 2026.
- Mahan, Mazyar, and Amal Shafek. “A Transnational Post-Third World Feminist Reading of Shirin Neshat’s Looking for Oum Kulthum (2017).” In The Palgrave Handbook of Arab Film and Media, edited by Samirah Alkassim. Palgrave, forthcoming 2026.
Journal Articles:
- Mahan, Mazyar. “Cinematic Isolation and Entrapment in The Lobster.” Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration 7, no. 1 (2022). Republished in the journal’s tenth-anniversary retrospective issue, 2025.
- Mahan, Mazyar. “The Subversive Effects of Defamiliarization in This Is Not a Film, Directed by Jafar Panahi.” The Spectator: The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Criticism 40 (Spring 2020).
Mazyar Mahan 