Sara Saljoughi

Sara Saljoughi's research focuses on questions of aesthetics and politics, particularly in relation to non-Western and postcolonial cinemas and the legacies of international counter-cinema. Among her research interests are collectivity, migration, gender, labour, and the maternal. Her essays have been published in the journals Camera Obscura, Feminist Media Histories, Iranian Studies, Film International, Iran Namag, and Film Criticism, as well as in several edited volumes. Professor Saljoughi is currently completing a book project on art cinema in Iranian during the 1960s and 1970s. She is co-editor of the anthology 1968 and Global Cinema (Wayne State University Press, 2018).

Professor Saljoughi’s research has been supported by numerous fellowships and grants from SSHRC, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and an Early Career Fellowship in the Jackman Humanities Institute's Aesthetic Education project.

Books Edited

Co-editor, with Christina Gerhardt, 1968 and Global Cinema. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2018.

Special Issues of Journals Edited

Co-edited with Zahra Khosroshahi, “Transnational Feminist Approaches to Film and Media from the Middle East and North Africa,” Transnational Screens 14, no. 2 (July 2023)

Co-edited with Negar Mottahedeh, “Rethinking Gender in Contemporary Iranian Art and Cinema,” Iranian Studies 45, no. 4 (July 2012)

Articles in Journals 

“A Woman Should be Scared: Maternal Ambivalence in Under the Shadow,” Transnational Screens 14, no. 2 (July 2023), 132-144.

With Zahra Khosroshahi, “Introduction: Transnational Feminist Approaches to Film and Media from the Middle East and North Africa,” Transnational Screens 14, no. 2 (July 2023), 83-88.

“Ten Theses on Iranian Cinema.” Iran Namag 3.3 (2018): 1-16.

“A Cinema of Refusal: The Sealed Soil and the Political Aesthetics of the Iranian New Wave.” Feminist Media Histories, Vol. 3 No. 1, Winter 2017; (pp. 81-102).

"A New Form for a New People: Forugh Farrokhzad's The House is Black." Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies (2017) 32 (1 94): 1-31; doi: 10.1215/02705346-3661982. 

“Third Cinema Now.” Film Criticism 40.1 (January 2016). 

“Jafar Panahi’s The Mirror: On Political Film in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema.” Film International 69 12.3 (2014). 

“Seeing, Iranian Style: Women and Collective Vision in Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin.” Iranian Studies 45.4 (July 2012): 519-535.

“Introduction: Rethinking Gender in Contemporary Iranian Art and Cinema.” Iranian Studies 45.4 (July 2012): 499-502. Co-authored with Negar Mottahedeh.

"Some Objects of the Affluent Society.” Inter/tidal: An Interdisciplinary Journal V (2012): 103-114.

"The Long and Invisible Road: Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel." Jadaliyya (15 May 2011).

Chapters in Books

“Hejab as Frame in Ten and Beyond” in Faces on Screen: New Approaches, edited by Alice Maurice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022: 181-191.

“The Eyes of the Unknown: Forugh Farrokhzad and Iranian Cinema” in No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image, edited by Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg. Cambridge: HKW/MIT Press, 2022: 322-325.

“Crow, Child, Stranger: Radical Mothering in Bashu,” Mothers of Invention: Film, Media, and Caregiving Labor, edited by Corinn Columpar and So Mayer. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2022: 173-190.

“The Hidden Half, or the Temporal and Collective Politics of Counter-Memory” in Counter-Memories: Memoryscapes in Iranian Cinema, edited by Ute Holl and Matthias Wittman. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022: 31-46.

“Political Cinema, Revolution, and Failure: The Iranian New Wave, 1962-1979.” 1968 and Global Cinema, edited by Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2018: 385-404.

With Christina Gerhardt. “Introduction: Looking Back: Global Cinema and the Legacy of New Waves around 1968” in 1968 and Global Cinema edited by Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2018: 1-22.

Book Reviews

“Blake Atwood, Reform Cinema: Film and Political Change in the Islamic Republic. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).” Review of Middle East Studies 53.1 (2019): 153-155.

“History and/in the Look-to-Camera: Review of Antoine de Baecque’s Camera Historica: A Century in Cinema. Trans. Ninon Vinsonneau and Jonathan Magidoff. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.” Discourse 37.1 (September 2015): 165-168.

“Review of Hamid Naficy’s A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volumes 1-4. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011-2012.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46.4 (November 2014): 824-826.

“The World at Home: A review of Shahab Esfandiary, Iranian Cinema and Globalization: National, Transnational and Islamic Dimensions.” Film Criticism 37.3/38.1 (Spring/Fall 2013): 160-163.

Select Other Writing 

You, Name a Few Beautiful Things: Forough Farrokhzad’s The House is Black. The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK (July 2019)

The Boundaries of Community: On Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow. The Walker Art Center: Crosscuts (July 2017).

“#52FilmsbyWomen.” Toronto International Film Festival: The Slate (March 2016).

“Nostalgic Returns.” In Media Res (August 2015) 

“Cinema: Iranian Women’s Contributions.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women. Ed.Natana DeLong-Bas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.