S. Zahra Moballegh

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Islam
WSRP Research Associate 2018–19 and 2023–24

Home institution

Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran

2023–24 research project

Narrating for Love and Change: Reading Women’s Stories in Search of a Feminist Qur’anic Narrator

There are about 25 stories in the Qur’an in which one or more women have a role. A linguistic-narratological study of these stories supports new feminist approaches to the Qur’an by shedding light on the meaning of femininity from the Qur’anic God’s point of view. This study also considers some repeated phenomena in the narrating style of the Qur’anic stories which reveal new features about the Qur’anic narrator.

2018–19 research project

From Being to Becoming Woman: Decoding the Meaning of Femininity in the Qur’anic Stories

Profile

Zahra Moballegh is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in Iran. She specializes in Philosophy and Islamic thought and has published several articles on feminist philosophy and Islamic feminism in Zanan e Emrooz (Women of Today), the leading magazine for women’s voices in Iran. Her first book, Faith as Reason: An Epistemological Approach to Feminist Theology, was the first Persian book about feminist philosophy and theology. Her other work, Logical Structure of Illuminationist Philosophies, introduces a new reading of Islamic philosophical thought inspired by feminist criticism regarding the separation of the theoretical reason from the practical.

Dr. Moballegh spent eight years at Encyclopedia Islamica Foundation where she wrote many entries about Qur’anic concepts, including the insightful entry of “Woman in the Qur’an.” Her research project at HDS, Narrating for Love and Change, has been initiated from the writing process of that entry and her studies in narratology. Dr. Moballegh earned her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tehran in 2012. She holds an MA and a BA in philosophy from the University of Tehran.