Woman, Life, Freedom, and the Comics Classroom After Mahsa Amini

Since the 2022 death of Mahsa Jina Amini in custody of the Guidance Patrol or morality police in Tehran, Iran, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi can also function in the classroom as a comics touching point for human rights discourses around the world and in particular—though not exclusively—those that impact women. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who brought intersectionality to the forefront of cultural and political discourses in 1989, has used the phrase “say her name” to draw attention to the deaths of women and children, especially Black women and children, at the hands of law enforcement officers. Chants of “Say her name, Mahsa Amini”, rang among protesters outside Khalifa International Stadium in Qatar ahead of Iran’s first match of the World Cup 2022 against England. Now in 2025, cultural conversations around feminism and creativity as resistance can turn to the woman, life, freedom movement in Iran. Shervin Hajipour’s song “Baraye”, meaning “for” in Persian, which was inspired by tweets echoing protesters’ calls for change, became an anthem of the uprising and exists in comic art as well as song. The comics classroom can address the concerns and issues surrounding Amini’s death and the ongoing relevance of Persepolis as a coming-of-age text about living as a woman in Iran. In dialogue with the works of Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson, Hillary Chute, Sally Munt, and bell hooks, this piece addresses the pedagogy of human rights through comic art as crisis witnessing. With attention to comics material from two members of the Iranian diaspora, Shabnam Adiban and Farid Vahid, from the 2024 collection Woman, Life, Freedom, put together by Satrapi, this piece navigates potential Orientalism and Islamophobia in the Western classroom through engagement with intersectional feminism.