Us & Them

Kurt and Azar Nafisi talk about how artists around the world view American art and culture. Nafisi is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of a critical study of Vladimir Nabokov’s novels published in Iran. She taught literature in English at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai University. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil, and emigrated to the United States in 1997. Her book Reading Lolita in Tehran recounts her experience teaching great books to students privately in her home.