Please join us for the seventh event in IRW’s 2025-2026 IRW Distinguished Lecture Series on Feminism, Academic Freedom, and Democracy with Holly Mason Badra (George Mason University) and Bahareh Khoshooee (Pratt Institute) on Thursday, March 26 at 4.30 pm. By registration only.
Register here:https://forms.gle/3KKx4uBPBvVDc4VC6. The deadline to register is Tuesday, March 24, at 12 noon. Registrants will receive information about the event's location after the registration deadline.
On Feminist and Queer Archival Practices
In this event on feminist and queer archival practices, Holly Mason Badra (George Mason University) will talk about the transnational, decolonial, and intersectional feminist practices that went into curating her edited book, Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora (2025). She will discuss how the collection exists as a site of refusal—refusing erasure, appropriation, monolithic portrayal, western saviorism, state violence, and other forms of subjugation. Through centering the voices, experiences, and creative work of contemporary Kurdish women and nonbinary writers, Sleeping in the Courtyard joins the efforts to amplify the lives and roles of Kurdish women in historical landscapes and within social, cultural, and creative contexts. Bahareh Khoshooee (Pratt Institute), will discuss feminist and queer approaches to archiving that foreground collective authorship, embodied knowledge, and affective memory. Drawing from her research and collaborative work with transnational feminist collectives and participatory media practices, she will explore how care, grief, and resistance are held, transmitted, and preserved, especially under conditions of erasure, censorship, and surveillance.
Holly Mason Badra (she/her) is a queer, Kurdish American writer living in Northern Virginia. She is the Associate Director of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. She has extensive experience as an educator, teaching elementary, middle, high school, and college English, Creative Writing, Humanities, Literature, and Women and Gender Studies courses. She received her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University in 2017, where she served as the blog editor for So to Speak: An Intersectional Feminist Journal of Language and Art. Published by The University of Arkansas Press, Mason Badra is the curatorial editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora (2025). She is a reader for Poetry Daily and board vice-president for Henar Press. You can learn more at her website here: https://www.hollymasonbadra.com/
Bahareh Khoshooee is a multidisciplinary artist, feminist activist, educator, and the co-founder of two collectives – Blockbusters (an international group of New Media artists), and [Redacted] (a network of feminist artists, activists, and technologists). Born in Tehran, Iran, Khoshooee uses time-based strategies in presenting work that fuses 3D environments, video projection mapping, sculpture, performance, and sound. Her practice explores the complex dualities of technology: its oppressive role in surveilling, documenting, and criminalizing BIPOC bodies, and its radical potential for futurity and alternative solidarities. Her work unearths how technology mediates the intimate and collective experiences of grief, violence, and memory, reclaiming these spaces as arenas for liberation, and reimagined futures.Khoshooee is the recipient of Eyebeam’s Democracy Machine Fellowship and a Skowhegan alumna. She has presented her solo installations at the Dorothy Center for The Arts, Baxter St CCNY, The Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts, The Orlando Museum of Art, and NADA MIAMI 2018 among others. Khoshooee has been included in various group exhibitions including the Honor Fraser Gallery, Latinx Project, Southern Exposure, Museum of Photography Stockholm, and the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg. Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Artnet News, The Metro, and The Creators Project.