Autobiography: Memoir and Literary Criticism/l'écriture-femme

Reading Lolita in Teheran

by Azar Nafisi

From January to March 2004 a group of us on WomenWritersThroughtheAges@Yahoo.com read and wrote to one another about Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Teheran: A Memoir in Books. Although I had not been that enthusiastic and during the first read was inclined to be more adversarially critical of Nafisi than sympathetic, the book grew on me, and eventually I assigned and read it with three different classes at GMU (where I teach) in the following year. I thus made up a series of lectures and I also posted to the list about the experience of teaching this book to students. In March 2005 Nafisi herself came to give a lecture at GMU and I wrote about this too (on my blog) and on list again.

Reading Lolita in Teheran: A Memoir in Books

• Introduction
• Part One: Lolita
  • February 8th Chapters 1 - 12
  • February 15th Chapters 13 - 22
• Part Two: Gatsby
  • February 22nd Chapters 1 - 15
  • February 29th Chapters 16 - 26
• Part Three: James
  • March 7th Chapters 1 - 14
  • March 14th Chapters 15 - 26
  • March 21st Chapters 27 - 35
• Part Four: Austen
  • March 28th Chapters 1 - 10
  • April 4th Chapters 11 - 26
• Teaching Reading Lolita in Teheran
  • Student Talks
    • Nabokov
    • Great Gatsby
    • Henry James
    • Austen
  • Classroom lectures
    • Nabokov
    • Great Gatsby
    • Henry James
    • Austen
  • Nafisi's visit and lecture