The virtual families we choose...

I am Sima Shakhsari, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University. My dissertation topic is "Performing Iranian-ness in Weblogistan: Gender, Sexuality, and Diasporic Politics of Blogging among Iranians in Toronto and Washington D.C." My multi-sited research among Iranian immigrant communities in Washington D.C. and Toronto explores the capacity of blogging in the construction of sexed and gendered Iranian diasporic subjectivities vis-à-vis imaginations of homeland. By studying people's blogging practices (e.g. formation of online and off-line blogging communities and networking with outside governmental and non-governmental entities) on one hand, and analyzing the construction of hegemonic subject positions of Iranian-ness in weblogs on the other, my research explores negotiations of diasporic subjectivities in the discursive field of nationalism, gender, and sexuality in the transnational space of Weblogistan.