Research Interests
Disciplinary Expertise: Socio-cultural Anthropology; Media Anthropology; Anthropology of Technology; Anthropology of Self and Subjectivity; Linguistic Anthropology; Anthropology of Mediation; Philosophical Anthropology; Material Culture; Applied Anthropology; Human-Computer Interaction.
Regional Expertise: Iran and Persianate Societies; Middle East
Education
Doctor of Philosophy in Socio-cultural Anthropology; 2017 (Expected)
University of Minnesota; Minneapolis, MN
Department of Anthropology
Dissertation: Being Written while Writing: Creation of Selves in the Persian Blogosphere
Master of Arts in Cultural Studies; 2008
Allameh Tabatabai University; Tehran, Iran
Department of Cultural Studies
Thesis: The Production and Consumption of Underground Music among the Iranian Youth: A Study in the Genre’s Narrative Structure, Morphology, and Function
Bachelor of Science in Sociology; 2005
Allameh Tabatabai University; Tehran, Iran
Department of Sociology
Academic Positions
Graduate Instructor; 2013-Present
University of Minnesota; Minneapolis, MN
Department of Anthropology
Instructor of Record:
Medical Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology: Reading Ethnographies
Understanding Cultures: Introduction to Anthropology
Adviser; 2017
University of Minnesota; Minneapolis, MN
Senior Project in Biology, Society, and Environment
Service Learning Project in The Community Engagement Scholars Program
Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology; 2015-2016
Macalester College; Saint Paul, MN
Anthropology Department
Instructor of Record:
Medical Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology
Graduate Assistant; 2008-2013
University of Minnesota; Minneapolis, MN
Teaching Assistant:
Anthropology of the Middle East
People and Cultures of India
Understanding Cultures: Introduction to Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology: Reading Ethnographies
Introduction to Cultural Diversity and the World System
Peer-reviewed Work
o Shiva, A. (2016) Understanding Users: The Extensions of Expectant Systems; In: 2016 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings; p. 120–133. doi:10.1111/1559-8918.2016.01080
o Shiva, A. (2005) Practical Logic and the New Capital: An Application of Bourdieu’s Theory in Sociology of Education; In: Social Sciences Education; vol.9 no.2 (in Persian)
Conference Presentations
o December 3, 2017 (accepted and scheduled): Setting Out to Stay In: Revisiting Tristes Tropiques’ Heterotopian Spaces of Transformation, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting.
o September 28, 2017 (accepted and scheduled): How Material Words and Technologies of Inscription Make People: On blogocentrization of bloggers in the Persian blogosphere, Material Culture: How Things Make People.
o November 16, 2016: “The Topic Itself Comes”: On the Precedence of Material Expression of Ideas over Immaterial Thoughts in the Persian Blogosphere, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting.
o August 30, 2016: Understanding Users: The Extensions of Expectant Systems, Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Community (EPIC) Conference.
o November, 19, 2015: Foldable Blogs: When Newness Is a Product of Repetition and Future Is an Outcome of a Return to the Past, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting.
o April 11, 2015: Being Written While Writing: How Blogging Contributes to Thought in the Persian Blogosphere, Central States Anthropological Society Annual Meeting.
o December 7, 2014: Democratization Through Silencing: The Irony of the Persian Blogosphere, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting.
o August 21, 2014: The Sorrowful Carnivals of Moharram: Transgression and the Bloody Rituals of Lamentation, 4th World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies.
o February 15, 2013: The Persian Blogosphere: A Story of Struggle over Authority, Computer Culture Section, 34th annual meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association.
Invited Talks and Workshops
o December 3, 2015: Anthropology of Science and Technology: An Overview. Department of Anthropology, Macalester College.
o April 11, 2015: Workshop: Mentoring Initiative—Things They Never Told Us about Graduate School, Central States Anthropological Society Annual Meeting.
o October 23, 2013: Social Media and Networked Politics in the Middle East. Global Media Seminar, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota.
o April 23, 2012: Power Relations in the Persian Blogosphere, Critical Cultural Qualitative Colloquium, School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Book Reviews
Nov 2017 (in press)
Social Media Freaks: Digital Identity in the Network Society. Dustin Kidd. Westview Press, 2017. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 55 (3)
Oct 2017
Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran. Shahram Khosravi. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 55 (2)
Aug 2017
Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging. Naomi Leite. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 54 (12)