The 85th episode of Parse provides some reflections on the archival traces of the Gulistan harem and its residents during Nasir al-Din Shah’s reign (1848-1896). The Gulistan harem was a woman-dominated homosocial space, housed in a unique domestic institution wherein tradition, modernity, piety, cosmopolitanism, gender, class and racial differences were negotiated by a host of local and transnational residents and visitors. Leila Pourtavaf examines the complex social and physical structure of this institution and the everyday life of its residents—at various points estimated to be between 700 and 2000 wives and female relatives, as well as different classes of employees. An abundance of historical traces and archival documents left behind by these constituents mark the late-Qajar harem as fertile ground for exploring the historical, cultural, spatial, and gendered entanglements which defined the Iranian modernization project in the second half of the 19th century.

Leila Pourtavaf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at York University. Her research and teaching stand at the intersection of gender, modernity, and Middle Eastern history. Dr. Pourtavaf is also a board member and faculty affiliate at the Tavakoli Archives in Toronto and the recipient of the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Scholar Award for 2023-2024.

To watch the full talk, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LbGVrr5jc8