Lecture Series with Prof. Nancy Gallagher

Dr. Nancy Gallagher, chairwomen of Middle Eastern Studies at UC Santa Barbara was welcomed by Pacifica Institute on October, 10, 2009. Her speech was based on her recent travel to Afghanistan on a global exchange reality tour, “Women Making Change.” A delegation of women spoke with Afghan women in non-governmental organizations, met with human rights activists and celebrated International Women’s Day with the ministry of Women’s Affairs.

Her speech was on the general situation of Afghani women in Afghanistan which was enriched by Dr. Gallagher’s personal field research in the region on the purpose of International Women’s Day, March, 8th. She included the Afghani Women’s social life after Taliban regime by illustrating her personal photo archive. Her main points were the changing lives of Afghani women especially after the Taliban and the efforts of Afghani women both at the state level and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) level in order to recover women’s rights in the region.

Dr. Gallagher’s presentation was followed by a documentary by Meena Nanji, she played Pacifica Institute audiences her rich documentary called “View From a Grain of Sand”. Meena Nanji born in Kenya, grew up in London, England, and then Los Angles. She received several grants and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation (2006, 1995), Women in Film Foundation, the Durfee Foundation, Center for Asian American Media, the National Endowment for the Arts, Pacific Pioneer Fund, Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department , Paul Robeson Fund and the American Film Institute. Nanji shot the film over a period of three years in the sprawling refugee camps of northwestern Pakistan and in the war-torn city of Kabul. Through a two-year long process of editing, additional shooting and archival research, she worked to locate the personal stories of the women she met within the larger context of international interference and war in the Middle East and the rise of religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan. Going beyond the surface of sensational news to explore the mechanisms of oppression, “View from A Grain of Sand” is political documentary at its best.

This documentary is based on her study of Afghani women combining a variety of footage, interviews and rare archival material. It is both harrowing and thought-provoking portrait of Afghan women’s history over the 30-years from the rule of King Zahir Shah in the 1960’s to the current Hamid Karzai government. The documentary is narrated through the eyes of three Afghani women – a doctor, a teacher, and women’s rights activists. The documentary tells the story of how war, international interference has stripped Afghan women of rights and also freedom. The powerful stories provide illuminating context for Afghanistan’s current situation and the ongoing battle women face in order to gain their basic human rights.

The main characters whose lives are depicted in “View From A Grain of Sand” are Wajeeha, Roeena and Shapire. Born in the rural province of Farah, Afghanistan, Wajeeha was, like her sisters, prevented from attending school. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, she fled to Iran, where she met her husband – a resistance fighter who was eventually killed in a Soviet ambush in the late 1980s, as Wajeeha was expecting her youngest son. Traveling to Pakistan, she stumbled on a demonstration by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and decided to join them. They taught her how to read and write, and she is now teaching literacy courses to other women, raising awareness and struggling to make women’s rights a reality in Afghanistan. Roeena was raised in Kabul and worked as a doctor there for three years before fleeing to Pakistan with her family in 1994 after her younger brother was killed by a random rocket attack. She has since worked for the International Medical Corps, aiding thousands in refugee camps. Shapire fled the Taliban in 1998 with her husband and five young children. As a young girl in Afghanistan, she had aspired to be a pilot or a journalist, but her ambitions were thwarted by her arranged marriage at the age of sixteen. Now she works as a teacher in a girls’ school founded by refugees in Pakistan.

After the lecture by Dr. Gallangher and the documentary by Nanji, there was a question and answer session.

Click here to see all the pictures of this event…