Iran and Anti-Imperial Feminism
An Interview with Faranak Miraftab
Illustration by Jamhoor, created using publicly available images
On Wednesday, 11th March, 2026, along with 135 other nations, India co-sponsored a resolution of the United Nations Security Council which condemned Iran for attacking several Gulf countries, while remaining silent about the US-Israeli unprovoked earlier attack on Iran. India's action came on the heels of Prime Minister Modi's visit to Israel where he hugged Netanyahu, condemned Hamas's actions of October 7, and remained silent on Isarel's genocide in Gaza. The cosponsoring of the resolution underscored the Hindu supremacist regime's endorsement of Trump and Netanyahu's global agenda. Condemning the Indian government's stand as "gutless," Arundhati Roy avowed: "I stand with Iran. Unequivocally. Any regimes that need changing, including the US, Israel and ours, need to be changed by the people, not by some bloated, lying, cheating, greedy, resource-grabbing, bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission." Of course, India's current position on Palestine and now on Iran ties in with the ruling party's Islamophobia, expressed both in its foreign policy and internally for decades. As far back as 2000, India's home minister, LK Advani, had visited Tel Aviv and announced that India and Israel shared "a common perception of terrorism as a menace, even more so when coupled with religious fundamentalism."
“Netanyahu shamelessly invoked the Iranian women’s movement’s slogan of “Zan Zindagi Azadi” before dropping bombs on civilians. Shortly after the US bombed a girls’ school in Iran.”
Today, I want to reflect on what the attack on Iran might mean for feminists in India, and more generally in South Asia, and on what it might mean for transnational feminist solidarities. As we know, the purported emancipation of women has been a key element in justifications of the Islamophobic US assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq, and of Israel's earlier attack on Iran in 2025 where Netanyahu shamelessly invoked the Iranian women's movement's slogan of "Zan Zindagi Azadi" before dropping bombs on civilians. Shortly after the US bombed a girls' school in Iran, left-wing politician Manuela Bergerot lashed out: "This is how the right defends the rights of Iranian women: by celebrating the murder of 160 girls." And it literally does this. The U.S. conservative commentator Matt Schlapp declared that "it is hypocritical to say that these attacks harmed women and children questioned how one could condemn their deaths when ...the young girls you reference would be...live a life [sic] in a barbaric and unequal society behind a burqa..."
Mourners at a funeral held for children killed in the strike. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
We in South Asia have been familiar with this playbook from the days of the British Raj, when colonial rule was justified by pointing to the "disgusting" sexual habits and culture of the natives. However, these colonial histories should not lead us to inhabit a binary between colonizers and colonized because that oversimplifies what is at stake now and renders invisible women's own demands for freedom and equality. We know this from our own history. Feminist historians of India have written extensively on how elite native men, increasingly disenfranchised and excluded from the public sphere, became more tyrannical at home, asserting the demands of native tradition and values to delegitimize women's demands for equality. From at least the early twentieth century, many women, as individuals and as part of organized groups, refused the choice between imperialist and home-grown patriarchies.
“From at least the early twentieth century, many women, as individuals and as part of organized groups, refused the choice between imperialist and home-grown patriarchies.”
In postcolonial India, the colonial playbook has been adapted in the service of Hindu majoritarianism, which has whipped up anti-Muslim sentiments by invoking the "plight" of Muslim women as victims of sexist biases within the community, while simultaneously casting Muslim men as rapacious, perpetually engaged in a "love jihad" to prey on Hindu women. The discourse of the Muslim woman as victim goes hand in hand with under-reporting or ignoring the horrific sexual violence that Muslim women were subjected to during the genocide in Gujarat in 2002. The courts have de facto legalized such violence—the men who raped Bilkis Bano were prematurely released in 2022 and welcomed home with sweets and garlands. Islamophobic pronouncements about Muslim polygamy and backwardness are brought up whenever the subject of reform of Muslim personal laws to give women greater equality comes up. This has meant that a Muslim woman was "called upon to make a difficult choice between her claims for gender equality and equal protection of law on the one hand, and her religious beliefs and community affiliations on the other" as feminist lawyer Flavia Agnes once put it. Refusing this choice, Muslim women in India have used even imperfect laws to fight for their rights, while also participating in the wider women's movement in India.
These earlier histories resonate with the situation that confronts anti-war anti-imperialist feminists, and indeed all anti-imperialists, today. While we condemn the attacks on Iran, we cannot also ignore the real critiques of the Iranian regime mounted by Iranian women. As Shahrzad Mojab, Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto puts it in a powerful recent statement:
A revolutionary feminist position on Iran must refuse the false and damaging binary that demands choosing between defending the Islamic Republic and endorsing US-imperialist and Zionist intervention. This is a constructed choice designed to collapse political judgment into campism. It converts solidarity into a competition of moral allegiances and leaves ordinary people, workers, women, youth, and minorities to a reality shaped simultaneously by internal repression as well as external militarized destruction.
It is in this context that I interviewed Faranak Miraftab, Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who shared Mojab's statement with me. Faranak herself had to flee Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran after her sister was executed along with 50 other women at the age of 27. Faranak herself was 23 at the time.
Our conversation touched upon issues of feminist anti-imperialism, as well as the need and scope of international feminist solidarities, which I think are useful for us in South Asia as we navigate the complexities of our own political landscapes.
Conversation with Faranak Miraftab
Ania Loomba: Faranak, on March 8, International Women's Day, the US feminists' coalition "Women's March" used the Iranian women's slogan "Women, Life Freedom" in order to critique the Israeli American war on Iran. Its Instagram post said: "Iranian Women have spent decades fighting for their freedom. They don't need Trump's bombs. Women's liberation will not be delivered by bombs. The same man whose DOJ buried a 13-year-old's testimony started a war without a vote, without a plan, and without our consent." The responses to this Instagram post defending the war were largely from Iranian women: "As an Iranian woman I need to disagree with you! We tried and every time, the barbaric regime killed many of us! Sorry but the only solution was the bombs! Thanks for your concern!" Another read: "Do Not dare to use this Name for your own benefits, woman life freedon [sic] Revolution," and yet another, "The irony of a woman life freedom placard with this message." There were many messages like this, what is your reaction?
Faranak Miraftab: First, my opinion on the Zan Zindagi Azadi movement is that it was one of the most progressive events that I have been part of and witnessed in my life. Woman, Life, Freedom was truly a feminist movement, in its approach, in the way it worked, in its slogan, and it was beautiful, beautiful to watch young men joining women and accepting women's leadership on the streets and following them.
When it was happening, I felt I was dreaming all of this. It cannot be possible to see men and women of all ethnicities and different classes supporting protesting women and understanding something that we feminists said for so long - that liberation of men wouldn't happen unless women are also liberated. This was theoretical, but I think 40-something years of vicious oppression in Iran, the key element of which was the control of women's bodies, proved to men that their liberation is through the liberation of women. And it was no longer theoretical; it was on the streets of the country.
The slogan Woman, Life, Freedom itself is progressive because it captures almost all those things that we stand for, right? Gender equity, livelihood, freedom. You know the slogan came from the Kurdish women's movement. And Iranian Kurds borrowed it and then spread it to the rest of the country. When it was happening in 2022, we wanted all the feminists around the world to come out in our support. With the exception of a few global south countries, including neighbouring Turkey, we did not see solidarity marches or statements by feminist movements. And it was our greatest dismay and disappointment. I, being based in the U.S., thought, why don't I see American feminists coming out, supporting this slogan, using it for their own cause? Because, at the same time, women in the U.S. were seeing their own social reproductive rights being eroded; we were all fighting for similar issues.
“Iranian women don’t have one singular position. We have various ethnic groups, different class interests, right and left on the political spectrum, and I don’t think anybody would be able to say, I am speaking for Iranian women. ”
I had an Indian friend who came to all our marches for Zan Zindagi Azadi in Champaign-Urbana, and I was so moved; she kept saying that in India, Muslim women were being targeted by the Hindu fundamentalist regime. And so, she was saying, whether it's against Hindu fundamentalism, or it is social reproductive rights in the U.S., or these other rights in Iran, we should all be united.
I do not see it as appropriation when the slogan is used to carry the same message. What I reject is when "Women Life Freedom" is used by parliamentarians in the European Union for their own cause to bash the Islamic Republic state, which is a vicious, suppressive, oppressive regime. But they are using it, you know, to score their own political points. That is when I reject it. So, it depends on who is using it, and towards what. When other feminist movements use the slogan, we celebrate it, we want it, that is how it should be.
Protestors at a Woman, Life, Freedom March near the Irani consulate in Istanbul. Photo: Reuters.
AL: Yes. Radical movements have always borrowed slogans from their comrades in other parts of the world or in other types of movements, for example, the slogan of Indian feminists "Hum Kya Chahte? Azadi!" [What do we want? freedom!"] was inspired by the women's movement in Pakistan. It has been used by dissident movements of different kinds in India, students' movements, in Kashmir, in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Similarly, the Chilean chant, "¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!" (The People united shall never be defeated") has been used in radical protests worldwide.
The March 8th women's march was for reproductive rights, but it was also explicitly against the US-Israeli war on Iran and saying that Iranian women don't need to be saved by Trump and Netanyahu. But in these messages, in their social media responses, we heard an endorsement of the Israeli-US attack by many Iranian women, and we have all seen images of Iranian women in London, Los Angeles and other cities celebrating the attack.
FM: So, Iranian women don't have one singular position. We have various ethnic groups, different class interests, right and left on the political spectrum, and I don't think anybody would be able to say, I am speaking for Iranian women. Nor can I say that. I want to be very clear that I speak from the position of a left anti-imperialist and feminist woman. And I do see that our enemies and our fronts of struggle are multiple. On one side, we are anti-imperialist, and we are against the intervention of the U.S and Israel into our affairs, but on the other hand, and simultaneously, we are also against the Islamic Republic state.
AL: But Faranak, the Iranian women who objected to US women using the slogan also pointed out that many US feminists have not spoken out against the Iranian regime thus far. One woman wrote, "If you remained dead silent after a massacre of 40,000 ppl just two months ago, and if you have remained silent for women being treated less than second rate citizens by IRI for 50 years, you now have ZERO right to use our name to push your agenda. Stop whitewashing regime’s crimes. Listen to Iranians. Stop patronizing us." Another wrote: "It is funny that when in 2022 I reached out to you about Woman Life Freedom movement and asked for support no one cared to reply."
“What I do not support is the position that says I am the only one who has the right to speak for Iranian women, and you cannot be in solidarity with me, either because you are not Iranian, or because you were silent in the past. ”
We also know that many liberal feminists have not come out in support of Gaza. Do you think that this might be a turning point in the United States where a lot of people who haven't previously spoken out might actually be so disgusted with this war that it might push them into taking stances that they were not willing to take earlier?
FM: People who are now taking a position against the war in Iran but did not utter a word when Iranian state massacred thousands of its own citizens in 48 hours, or remained silent about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, that is not acceptable. Those lives were as precious as the lives of civilians that are being bombed in Iran today. But it doesn't mean that because they were silent then, they must be silent now. It does mean that if your humanity is moved now, if you don't want to see schoolchildren killed and innocent people in their homes being bombed and killed, then you should continue this not only for Iran but also for Gaza and everywhere we see imperial military bullies at work. I support that position.
What I do not support is the position that says I am the only one who has the right to speak for Iranian women, and you cannot be in solidarity with me, either because you are not Iranian, or because you were silent in the past. As an anti-imperialist feminist Iranian outside Iran, I very much welcome feminists in India, in the U.S. and everywhere else to lend their voice to us and use this same slogan whose origin is transnational, and further globalize it, but not to prostitute it by selectively choosing moments of solidarity. Because I don't think this struggle will end here.
Yes, so if your consciousness is raised now and you are paying attention, please continue to raise your voice in the future. Rather than silencing them, we should engage with these new voices that are daring to speak in true solidarity, a solidarity which should not exist just in this moment but in the future too.
AL: That's a really important point, because what you're also saying is that our movements must grow, and we cannot push away people who want to come in.
FM: Exactly, otherwise we stay atomized. We must, as left anti-imperialist feminists, use opportunities to grow. We must understand that my struggle and your struggle are connected. If I am fighting about women's issues in Iran, which are really human rights issues, it doesn't mean that I am necessarily lining up with the U.S. or Israel. I think this is the moment in which we can make that position clear, that I am against the Zionists, and the attack on Iran, and I am, at the same time, against the oppression of Iranians by the state. The sad thing is that what happened in Gaza was a playbook for Israel, and they are going to do the same in Iran, using the same language, justifications and brutality. And a truly transnational feminist left perspective can see these similarities.
AL: Can you spell out the playbook a bit more?
FM: Well, when they hit the first hospital in Gaza, I remember that there was a scramble about who hit it. They said, oh, Hamas hit it, it wasn't us. And then, it was like nothing happened, and they were going out there outright and hitting hospitals and schools. And saying that people in these places are being used like human shields.
And now they are doing exactly the same. They hit the school, and yesterday, a number of medical health centres were hit. I’ve lost track of the exact count, but it's incredibly high. You know, we have been under sanctions, so our medications have been produced locally. They have hit two of the most important pharmaceutical factories in Iran.
That is the playbook: going after schools and hospitals and not even being worried about covering it up. They haven't said that pharmaceutical companies are housing human shields, but they say that about the hospitals. I was reading somewhere that they say that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is meeting in the basement of hospitals.
So that's the playbook. And Israel has a real interest in seeing Iran razed to the ground.
AL: Yes absolutely. Faranak, I wonder if you would be willing to share a little bit about your own history and how it informs the stances that you take today. What are your thoughts when you look back to that earlier period? Many of the readers of this interview might be much younger people who don't have an intimate knowledge of what happened in Iran 30 to 40 years ago.
“The left has been paying the price all along. We have been persecuted by the Shah and by the Islamic Republic from the very early days. It is not surprising that followers of the Shah’s son also chant slogans against the left today.”
FM: I came to political consciousness under the monarchy, prior to the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Maybe the younger generation doesn't have that historical memory, but I remember how scared we were of SAVAK, the Shah's intelligence service, which was trained by Israel's Mossad and CIA. Everybody knew that their techniques of torture, their mechanisms of control, and surveillance were taught by Mossad. That was an incredibly scary time for the left, and those opposed to the Shah.
Reza Pahlavi and John F. Kennedy in Washington, D.C. in 1962.
While opposition overall was viciously suppressed under the Shah, he thought that Islam was not as serious a threat as was the left. Hence the organizational network of the religious opposition and the mosques were able to lead the revolution. And shortly after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the surveillance machinery of SAVAK changed its name to SAVAMA and was used to pursue the opposition including the left.
My own beloved sister was arrested for her activism with a leftist group and in 3 weeks, without a trial or hearing, was executed, together with 50 other young girls. That was in December 1981. And many of my comrades and friends also experienced similar tragedies.
“ The whole phenomenon of Reza Pahlavi is very young, it’s 2 to 3 years old because during the Woman Life Freedom movement his name was not in the streets.”
The left has been paying the price all along. We have been persecuted by the Shah and by the Islamic Republic from the very early days. It is not surprising that followers of the Shah’s son also chant slogans against the left today. If you are supporting Iranians against the Islamic Republic, you should also support them against imperialism, against foreign intervention, against control of our affairs by the US or Israel. From a feminist and left perspective, this ability to fight on two fronts at the same time is very important.
AL: You mentioned, when we last spoke, that the monarchists were against the slogan "Women Life Freedom." And that they were not part of that movement. Despite being very anti-feminist, they claim, like large sections of the Western media, that Iranian women were so "free" under the Shah.
FM: It's very interesting, actually. The whole phenomenon of Reza Pahlavi is very young, it's 2 to 3 years old because during the Woman Life Freedom movement his name was not in the streets. People didn't know that he claims to be an alternative. He rose to fame because of the support of the television stations that are funded by Israel, and because of the social media propping him. Some people will say that the Woman Life Freedom movement didn't succeed because it didn't have a leader, didn't have a recognizable name to rally behind. And they use that very reasoning to argue that we need to follow Reza Pahlavi now.
I see such arguments as indications of extreme hopelessness. In a constant struggle between hope and despair, the tragedy is in the defeat of imagination, in imagining the possibility of an alternative. People don't see how they can get rid of this oppressive regime, which has a monopoly on force. How can we ever confront it on the streets, facing its bullets? So they say, this is not going to work, we need another military intervention to "rescue" us. And again, they don't have the historical and transnational perspective which tells us imperialists have never ever liberated any people.
The other point you were mentioning, how in the rallies of the monarchists, banners of Woman Life Freedom were banned. The monarchists were bringing them down because they saw them as a competition to their own slogan which is Long Live the King.
AL: Where were these rallies? Outside Iran, yes?
FM: Yeah, outside Iran, and the Shah's son never came out to say, I do not endorse or approve of the behaviour of my followers. I think it is very sad, because what Woman Life Freedom did in Iran was profound. I mean, maybe it did not change the regime, but it had transformative effects. Culturally, it went into every household, every conversation. From rich to poor, from Kurds and Baloch people to the centre of the country. And it sparked a consciousness and a cultural transformation that is worth decades. It's not a change that resulted in a change of power, but the civil disobedience of women was very important. Practically, they were not wearing their hijab anyway. So, they practiced what they were refusing to do. And this was the case even until last month.
I think what we are seeing, sadly, is the toxic masculinist patriarchal powers of the U.S. and the Zionists, Pahlavi, and the Islamic Republic. All of them are representatives of the patriarchal, sexist order. They have come together, and they are also fighting against each other. And this is just one incident in history in which we see how patriarchal and anti-patriarchal powers, capitalism and anti-capitalism, imperialism and anti-imperialism are ranged in this fight. And we have to be very clear on which side we are on in each of these fronts.
AL: Would it be fair to say that the Woman Life Freedom movement prepared the ground for the next wave of protests about economic issues? It was a broadening of the protest because Women Life Freedom was also about sustenance.
FM: When months ago, with the devaluation of the toman, the bazarees (merchants) closed their shops, many of us were saying that this is the "Life" part of the slogan which is now the focus. The demand was that we cannot live with this kind of economic situation. I was not there, but through social media I was seeing very powerful scenes of civil disobedience. There were scenes of youth sitting in front of the police forces, just sitting, like those scenes from Tiananmen Square. And it was very powerful.
But the call from outside Iran by the Shah's son was: you have to come out at night and attack and take over the key state institutions and bases. He called for a very different form of confrontation from the feminist strategies which had worked, not in the sense of toppling the regime but in bringing in more people. We still have 20% of Iranian voters supporting the hardliners. We can't kill them all, we can't throw them in the sea. The feminist movement was practicing civil disobedience. I've been seeing how it works. The movement brings in villagers and people from all over the country. But the protest movement last year quickly changed from horizontal feminist practices of resistance to very masculinist type of strategies. At the same time, Mossad proclaimed that its agents were amongst the protestors, and that definitely made things worse, and offered the state a convenient justification to come in with full force and start shooting at people. Not that they would have resisted shooting anyway. They shot people during Woman Life Freedom. But I'm just pointing out that feminist practices of cultural and horizontal organizing were very hard for the regime to control. When this changed to a more masculinist language, it gave a free ticket to the hardliners to be in power.
Airstrikes target an oil depot in Tehran, Iran, March 7, 2026. Image: Le Monde.
AL: What do you know about Trump saying he hopes the Kurdish movement would also mount an offensive against the Iranian regime?
FM: Yes, well Trump was claiming that the Kurdish movement is now going to be working as the U.S.’s ground troops. It seems like that claim has died down. I haven't heard it in the last two or three days. When it first started being mentioned, Komalah, which is the communist party of the Kurdish people, said they are not going to participate in this, that they understand that imperial forces will use their people and land as sacrifice for their imperial ambitions, that what they did in Rojava, the Kurdistan of Syria, they will also do here. So, they distanced themselves from the other six groups that had formed an alliance to potentially enter the war.
AL: Faranak, what contact do you have with your own friends and family in Iran today? What other news can you get from inside?
FM: I have heard from two cousins. Not directly, but they managed to contact their children who were abroad, and say, “we are alive.” But I haven't been able to connect with my aunt who is in a nursing home or with my extended family. The Iranian students who are here, and who have their parents and siblings back in Iran are very stressed and distressed.
“Anti-war feminists outside Iran are being very much viciously attacked by the monarchists who are aligned with Israel and Trump.”
The pounding continues. The lack of internet has meant that very few images come out. Just as in Israel, in Iran they are not allowed to broadcast their own losses. The state wants to have control over what information is broadcast. But in the few images that have come out, you can see the flattening of neighbourhoods, images that resonate with those from Gaza. Some of the voices that come out are saying they don't want this war.
AL: That would be a very hard position to take today. I remember reading, in an important interview with Neda Naji, a feminist and former political prisoner in Iran. She described the situation after the Israeli attacks on Iran some two years ago, saying that "While the right-wing Iranian opposition, which supported the military attacks, were dancing happily in the safe streets of Europe and America, feminists tried to raise their voices against the war to the best of their ability. This was a very difficult task in a situation where opposition to war among Iranians is not a given and the killing of civilians is considered a natural and inevitable part of war. Even what is happening in Gaza cannot awaken those who have been deluded by the lies of military aggressors and child killers." She rightly pointed out that the result of such imperialist wars is always "the intensification of nationalism and the discourse of defending the homeland." This is what we are seeing today also, yes?
FM: Yes, anti-war feminists outside Iran are being very much viciously attacked by the monarchists who are aligned with Israel and Trump. And internally, the killing of Khamenei, who deserved to face justice and be tried by families of its victims, is, instead, being mourned as a martyr. Thanks to the Israel-U.S. military attack, the hardline has the perfect excuse for its repression. This military aggression has strengthened the fundamentalist state and further pushed back the gains by the long struggle of workers, teachers, women and students' movements.
“Having said that, I wish to stress that the people of Iran should not be seen as victims. They are fierce and in resistance.”
In recent days, the IRGC appears frequently on the Islamic Republic's TV threatening people very clearly, saying that if now we see anyone protesting in the streets, we will treat them not as protesters, but as enemies. And we won't waste time and resources to arrest them; we will just shoot and execute them. So, people in Iran are experiencing both imperialist and state violence.
One of my friends said that she received a short note from a family member through a VPN, which is very hard to get and expensive, which said that they feel very lonely. They are being bombed from the sky. And from the state. The state is supposed to be your protector. It is shooting anti-ballistic missiles, which is protecting you against bombs but it's also bombarding you with these threats of violence, and I think that is why they feel very lonely.
Having said that, I wish to stress that the people of Iran should not be seen as victims. They are fierce and in resistance. Almost five decades of educational manipulation, imprisonment, punishment and various forms of economic, political and existential violence was not able to silence people. The same people who have been rising repeatedly despite threats of state violence, are resisting the imperial military invasion of Israel-US forces. I am however deeply concerned about the cost of this process.
AL: That's why it's even more important that everybody who is outside shows their solidarity.
FM: Yes, and one important support should be for the political prisoners among whom are amazing civil society leaders who can create an alternative to this regime and to the Shah’s son, who is presented as the only alternative to the IRI. That Reza Pahlavi, who has no political career, has done nothing in the last decades, can suddenly be projected as an alternative, is an indication of the political vacuum that the Iranian state is to blame for. Even reformists who were rising through the clergy system, were silenced, arrested, imprisoned or killed. The vacuum that the state produced gave rise to this monstrous Israeli project of restoring the monarchy.
AL: This is a crucial point that you've made about political prisoners. At the same time, not every opponent of this regime is jailed. So, can you tell us what efforts are being made to lay the ground for such an alternative?
FM: There are calls from inside and outside the country to create a council of transition which would have people from various ethnic groups and political orientations including leftists and feminists involved in the Women Life Freedom movement. On March 14th, they announced their first gathering in Europe. The inclusive Woman, Life, Freedom Networkofficially emerged from the Women Life Freedom movement. It is one of the most active networks working both inside Iran and abroad to help establish a coordinating and leadership council for the period following the fall of the Islamic Republic. This network has supported various grassroots movements in Iran, including workers’ movements, students' movement, teachers’ protests, and other forms of grassroots movements. There is another group called Progressive Students, consisting of students from different universities across Iran, who also maintain links with broader social movements, including the workers’ movement, retirees’ protests, the student and school student movements, the women’s movement, and the movement against executions. In this sense, their network of connections extends across multiple sectors of Iranian civil and social activism. Since the war began, they have not been able to be as active due to the internet shutdown but based on a few posts on X and Telegram, we know that they remain active on the ground.
As we say in Spanish, la lucha continua. The struggle continues.
Ania Loomba is Catherine Bryson Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania and Global Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary University London. She writes on race and colonialism, feminism, contemporary Indian literature and society, as well as Renaissance literatures and cultures.
Faranak Miraftab is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign with courtesy appointments at the departments of Gender and Women Studies and Geography. A native of Iran, she has conducted research in Latin America, Africa, and North America.