THE DAWN IS TOO FAR (2024) with filmmaker Dr. Persis Karim

THE DAWN IS TOO FAR (2024, 55 min, by Persis Karim and Soumyaa Kapil Behrens)
A screening and dialogue with co-director and co-producer Dr. Persis Karim
This 55-minute poetic documentary features stories about individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area Iranian-American community. It narrates a longer arc of history that begins with the arrival of Iranians as students in the early 1960s, their participation in social and artistic movements, and their contributions to the communities where they live and work. THE DAWN IS TOO FAR tells the larger history of US-Iran relations through themes of exile, alienation, and separation, particularly in the context of the 1979 revolution and hostage crisis, but also more recent events like the 2017 "Muslim Ban." Told by firsthand participants, the film highlights resilience, fortitude, and ways of finding belonging and redefining "home."
Post-screening dialogue with Dr. Persis Karim moderated by Shirin Vossoughi (Associate Professor, Learning Sciences).

About the speakers:

Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. She is the editor of three anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature, and has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic journals, as well as poetry and essays in non-academic publications. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film and reflects her interest in documenting and sharing the larger history and personal stories of those who are part of the global Iranian diaspora.

Shirin Vossoughi is an educator, mother, writer and associate professor of Learning Sciences at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy, where she draws on ethnographic and interactional methods to study the cultural, historical, socio-political, and ethical dimensions of education and the relationships between human learning and social change. Dr. Vossoughi’s research centers on learning environments that blend formal and informal elements and support young people to develop, question and expand transdisciplinary and artistic knowledge in ways that nourish educational self-determination. She is particularly concerned with understanding the forms of pedagogical mediation, ethical relations, and developmental trajectories that take shape within these settings. Her current work looks closely at teaching and learning in making/STEAM environments, literacy learning in the context of political education, intergenerational learning within Iranian families with a history of political activism, and the conditions that support justice-oriented educator learning. She takes a collaborative approach to research, partnering with teachers, families, and students to co-design and study the conditions that foster educational dignity and possibility.
Presented with support from The Colloquium for Global Iran Studies (CoGIS) and the Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern University.
FREE & OPEN TO ALL

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