As a graduate student, Parisa Vaziri was compelled to learn more about the history of enslavement in the Indian Ocean.“
It managed to be simultaneously mysterious, taboo, uninteresting and nonexistent for most people,” said Vaziri, assistant professor of comparative literature and Near Eastern studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.
At the time, Vaziri was studying Iranian films made in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the most important periods of Iranian filmmaking, and she realized that knowing the history of Indian Ocean slavery was crucial to her understanding of the films.
Source: Tracing Indian Ocean slavery through Iranian cinema | Cornell Chronicle