Homeira Qaderi grew up in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and as a young woman defied the social order to teach reading and writing to her peers. She later challenged the norms of a patriarchal and theocratic society to pursue university studies in literature and become an advocate for education and human rights. This talk will focus on challenges for women in Afghanistan and potential directions for social change in the country.
Dr. Homeira Qadari is an Afghan women’s rights activist and the author of Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother’s Letter to Her Son (Harper Perennial, 2020). She is currently an associate research scholar at the Council on Middle East Studies at the Yale MacMillan Center. She earned a Bachelors and a Masters degree in literature in Iran, as well as a Ph.D. in Persian Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.
Part of our winter 2024 lecture series, "Authoritarianism and Its Discontents."