I’ve brought a
mirror to see
which of us is
more dead

About me

Fatemeh Shams is a poet, intersectional feminist activist, and associate professor of Persian literature. She also serves as core faculty member of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at Penn. Her scholarship lies at the intersections of sociology, gender studies, and literature with a focus on literary production as a politicizing practice. Her critical monograph, A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-Option Under the Islamic Republic (Oxford University Press, 2021) is a groundbreaking account of literary canon formation under the autocratic rule of the Islamic Republic in comparison with the Soviet experience. Her essays address questions of gendered literary historiography, womanhood, threshold, and sensory representations of exilic identity in the Persianate world and beyond through a comparative lens.