Cursed Subjects and Other Sights: Qajar Prison Photography and the Sounds and Silences of Heresy in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Legal History

Bringing together legal history and the history of photography, this panel discussion examines the ways Qajar state power sought to make dissident, criminal, and heretical subjects both speak and appear through interrogation and torture, through the marking and mutilation of bodies, and through the emerging practice of prisoner photography. From Bábí and Bahá’í apostasy trials and the political meanings assigned to silence, cursing, and confession, to photographs of Hajj Sayyah, Mirza Reza Kermani, and other 19th century prisoners, the scholars discuss how the captive body and its photography participated in the spectacle and administration of the emerging nation state.

The panel will conclude by considering an extraordinary image: the prison photograph of Badíʿ, the youthful bearer of Bahá’u’lláh’s letter to Nasir al-Din Shah, photographed shortly before his execution in 1869. In his anonymously published book, A Traveler’s Narrative, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá takes the image produced within the apparatus of Qajar punishment and reads it otherwise, directing attention to Badíʿ’s composure and bearing. This counter-reading, signaling ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s signature modernism, provides the point of departure for the new course offered by the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford, Iranian Visionary: On ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Modernism, to understand ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s thinking on questions of governance, war and peace, technology, gender, racial justice, and competing visions of progress and modernity in the early 20th century.

Dr. Negar Mottahedeh is a cultural critic and media theorist whose interdisciplinary scholarship makes contributions to Iranian Studies. She is known for her work on contemporary Iranian cinema and has, in addition, published on the role of technology and media in upheavals and revolutions; on 'Abdu'l-Bahá’s vision of human solidarity and peace in the 20th Century; on Babism and Qajar history; on the Women’s March of 1979 in Tehran, and the British, French, and American feminists of the period; and on Bahram Beyzaie and performance traditions in Iran. She is Professor in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University, and is a Visiting Professor at Stanford University's Iranian Studies Program during the fall of 2026.

Dr. Mira Xenia Schwerda earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2020. She is an Assistant Professor in the History of Photography and New Media at Duke University. Her book manuscript-in-progress, tentatively titled Between Art and Propaganda: Photographing Revolution in Modern Iran (1905–1911), focuses on the art and visual culture of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution. She is the co-editor of the journal Art in Translation, a co-founder of the Virtual Islamic Art History Seminar Series, and the former Managing Director (2023-25) of the digital humanities project Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online.

Dr. Farzin Vejdani is a Professor of Middle Eastern History at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he teaches courses on the history of Muslim societies, the modern Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire, and Middle Eastern and North African cities. His books include Private Sins, Public Crimes: Policing, Punishment, and Authority in Iran (Yale University Press, 2024), and Making History in Iran: Education, Nationalism, and Print Culture (Stanford University Press, 2014). In his other publications, Dr. Vejdani has explored the themes of everyday crime and punishment, folklore, transnational Persian print networks, and connected histories of the Ottoman Empire, India, and Iran. In addition to being the author of several book chapters, he has published numerous articles in nearly a dozen journals. He is also the co-editor of Iran Facing Others: Identity Boundaries in a Historical Perspective (2012).

This event is made possible by a generous gift from the Taslimi Foundation, establishing a new endowment at Stanford Iranian Studies for the study of the Baha’i Faith in Iran.

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