Taylor: Taylor addresses the rising interest in cross-cultural and ‘foreign’ references, artists and iconographies within the Western mainstream art dialogue in the 1960s and 1970s by analyzing—as well as critiquing—the varied performance and permanent works.

Shaksari: Shaksari analyzes the so-called ‘hypervisibility’ of queer culture in Iran in the last decade and the role of the internet and social media within simultaneous processes of acceptance and rejection by mainstream Middle Eastern culture.

Professor Sima Shaksari’s analysis of queer hypervisibility in Iran—in addition to studies of exile—rightly shows the varied processes at work in the increasingly modern social capital of the internet and social media. By considering the trends of activism and media attention, it becomes evident that the wide-reaching scope of the internet romanticizes diasporic and queer narratives; Shaksari specifically highlights the ways in which language contributes to the public perception of these subjects. In terms of this language, the tendency to romanticize (eg through the usage of ‘diaspora’ instead of ‘exile, etc.) has the capacity to undermine the inherent struggles of global forced migration. (Shaksari, 26) Shaksari argues that the “cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and increased mobility of the Iranian diaspora” cannot be removed from their context and, as such, the use of ‘diaspora’ within queer theories and the trend toward this term (and its romantic qualities) have the power to reduce and decontextualize the powerful experience of exile. (Shaksari, 25) By problematizing the term, Shaksari draws upon Anne-Marie Fortier (2000) to illustrate that terminology can facilitate an “easy acceptance of multi-locationality, hybridity, border crossing, and multiplicity” while also replacing the authentic experience of exile with a romanticized version that simplifies its multilateral nature.