Publications
Edited Volumes
Hoda Mahmoudi, Jane Parpart, and Kate Seaman (Eds)
Women and Inequality in a Changing World explores the obstacles women continue to face to their equal participation in all areas of daily life—political, social, and economic—which persist despite the growth in the education of girls, large-scale social movements, and political waves.
The volume widens and deepens understanding of women in relation to the inequalities they face, based not only on gender, but also on race, class, religion, and more. It also highlights the progress that women have made, and how this progress contributes to the creation of more peaceful and prosperous societies. This interdisciplinary book brings together leading scholars and practitioners from across the globe to provide a wide range of perspectives and experiences, examine crucial questions, and offer new ideas and innovative solutions to increasing the role of women moving forward.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of gender studies, women’s studies, and political science, as well as practitioners working at the intersection of women and global issues.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Please note that Chapter 6 is excluded from this Creative Commons license. Pieces of this chapter were previously published in: Golan, G., ‘Autobiographical Note’ in Galia Golan: An Academic Pioneer on the Soviet Union, Peace and Conflict Studies, and a Peace and Feminist Activist (PAHSEP, Vol. 22), published 2018, Springer International Publishing, reproduced with permission of SNCSC. The author is grateful to the publisher for permission to reuse the material, which is still copyright protected and owned by the publisher.
Hoda Mahmoudi, Jenny Roe, and Kate Seaman (Eds)
This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to our understanding of infrastructure, and it’s influence on happiness and wellbeing, by examining the concept from economic, human development, architectural, urban planning, psychological, and ethical points of view. Providing insights from both research and practice the volume discusses how to develop happier cities and improve urban infrastructure for the wellbeing of the whole population.
The book puts forth the argument that it is only in understanding the true nature of infrastructure’s reach – how it connects, supports, and enlivens human beings – that we can truly begin to understand infrastructure’s possibilities. It connects infrastructure to that most elusive of human qualities – happiness – examining the way infrastructure is fundamentally tied to human values and human well-being. The book seeks to suggest novel approaches, identify outmoded undertakings, and define new possibilities in order to maximize infrastructure’s impact for all people – with a focus on diversity, inclusion and equity.
In seeking to define infrastructure broadly and examine its possibilities systematically this book brings together theory and evidence from multiple disciplinary perspectives including, sociology, urban studies, architecture, economics, and public health in order to advance a startling claim – that our lives, and the lives of others, can be substantively improved by greater adhesion to the principles and practices of infrastructure design for happiness and wellbeing
Rashawn Ray and Hoda Mahmoudi (Eds)
Racist policies are identified as "opportunity killers," and the disparities created by them often have racism sustained through race-neutral policies. Systemic Racism in America: Sociological Theory, Education Inequality, and Social Change situates our contemporary moment within a historical framework and works to identify forms, occurrences, and consequences of racism as well as argue for concrete solutions to address it.
This volume assembles renowned and thought-provoking social scientists to address the destructive impacts of structural racism and the recent, incendiary incidents that have driven racial injustice and racial inequality to the fore of public discussion and debate. The book is organized into three parts to explore and explain the ways in which racism persists, permeates, and operates within our society. The first part presents theoretical perspectives to analyze the roots and manifestation of contemporary racism; the second concentrates on educational inequality and structural issues within our institutions of learning that have led to stark racial disparities; and the third and final section focuses on solutions to our current state and how people, regardless of their race, can advocate for racial equity.
Urgent and needed, Systemic Racism in America is valuable reading for students and scholars in the social sciences, as well as informed readers with an interest in racism and racial inequality and a passion to end it.
Hoda Mahmoudi, Michael Allen, and Kate Seaman (Eds)
This book challenges the current thinking and strategies in the field of global peace and security. It is clear that current global public and private institutions are inadequate for the challenges we face today. These challenges cut across borders and require a more coordinated and concerted effort to find workable solutions. This book therefore begins with the question of global leadership and works its way back to the interconnected dynamics of global modernity and conflict. It is divided into four parts, each addressing a fundamental challenge to global peace and security. By exploring how we break out of the current framework, in which we understand global activities and the distribution of resources, and this book provides new ways of understanding the material, cultural, political, and spiritual relations that form the basis of international society.
Hoda Mahmoudi, Alison Brysk, and Kate Seaman (Eds)
Utilizing the ethos of human rights, this insightful book captures the development of the moral imagination of these rights through history, culture, politics, and society. Moving beyond the focus on legal protections, it draws attention to the foundation and understanding of rights from theoretical, philosophical, political, psychological, and spiritual perspectives.
The book surveys the changing ethos of human rights in the modern world and traces its recent histories and process of change, delineating the ethical, moral, and intellectual shifts in the field. Chapters incorporate and contribute to the debates around the ethics of care, considering some of the more challenging philosophical and practical questions. It highlights how human rights thinkers have sought to translate the ideals that are embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into action and practice.
Interdisciplinary in nature, this book will be critical reading for scholars and students of human rights, international relations, and philosophy. Its focus on potential answers, approaches, and practices to further the cause of human rights will also be useful for activists, NGOs, and policy makers in these fields.
Hoda Mahmoudi and Michael Penn (Eds)
The concept of human dignity is essential to discourses of human rights, and to understand what it means in a rapidly changing twenty-first century world, we must answer a number of difficult questions that require input from a wide range of disciplines. How is the concept of human dignity protected, maintained, or ensured? What are the rights and responsibilities that go hand in hand with the concept of human dignity? Which beliefs, discourses, individuals, and institutions threaten its global application or block its reach across all categories of difference? How is the consciousness of human dignity developing and evolving across the globe?
This timely collection gives urgent and sustained attention to such questions. It brings together a diverse array of field-leading contributors in order to offer an interdisciplinary investigation into this most fundamental of concepts. Weaving together reinforcing patterns, this book offers insights, questions, and recommendations that outline a discourse, research, and action agenda in pursuit of the universal application of human dignity. Contributors identify the challenges and opportunities in the realms of research, policy, education, religion, international law, social discourse, and media to define, broaden, and protect human dignity within both public and private spheres. They also address the need for reconstituting the current discourses on dignity to align them more effectively with the intellectual, moral, emotional, and spiritual nature of human beings, ultimately gesturing towards a framework for ensuring that each member of the human race will be able to realize their full human potential.
For its rigorous interdisciplinary inquiry into this deceptively simple concept, and for its practical questions and effective solutions, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Dignity and Human Rights is essential reading for researchers and students working within international relations, global studies, philosophy, peace and conflict studies, and legal studies focusing on human rights and humanitarian law.
Hoda Mahmoudi and Steven Mintz (Eds)
Globalization has carried vast consequences for the lives of children. It has spurred unprecedented waves of immigration, contributed to far-reaching transformations in the organization, structure, and dynamics of family life, and profoundly altered trajectories of growing up. Equally important, globalization has contributed to the world-wide dissemination of a set of international norms about children’s welfare and heightened public awareness of disparities in the lives of children around the world. This book's contributors – leading historians, literary scholars, psychologists, social geographers, and others – provide fresh perspectives on the transformations that globalization has produced in children's lives.
Monographs
Hoda Mahmoudi
This volume examines the life of the remarkable woman, Susan Moody, and her travels to Iran in the early 20th century during seismic changes in the world.
Dr. Susan I. Moody’s Travels to Iran 1909-1934: Courageous Odyssey captures a fleeting moment of arresting change and shimmering possibility. Exploring the fading values of the 19th century and the emergent understandings of the 20th century, the author shows how one individual navigated such challenging times. This book explores the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the women’s movement, advances in medicine and healthcare, and the start of a new religion – The Baha’i Faith – of which Moody became a devoted member. Susan Moody was a pathbreaking artist and educator who became a physician later in life. She made the bold decision to leave the United States and travel to Iran in 1909 to serve women who effectively had no access to medical care. In examining Dr. Susan Moody’s story, this volume seeks to reflect on our own changing moment and the ever-present possibilities of improvement and advancement. By tracing her own courageous odyssey, we are invited to more deeply understand our own.
This book will be of value to students and scholars alike interested in Women’s and Gender history and Social and Cultural history.
Hoda Mahmoudi and Janet Khan
June 2020 marks one hundred years since the two historic Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were delivered to the Central Organization for a Durable Peace at The Hague. The Tablets, combined with His public talks that were presented during His travels in the West between 1911 and 1913, offer comprehensive insights about Bahá’u’lláh’s panoramic vision for the attainment of universal peace.
In this volume, the historical circumstances that shaped nineteenth-century peace movements and the catastrophic impact of the First World War are examined. During the time these significant events were unfolding, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was actively engaged in promoting a clear understanding of the Bahá’í perspective on peace. Far more than simply focusing His discourse on the means to end wars, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá offered the holistic, all-inclusive vision for global peace—the oneness of humanity—outlined in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh.
This book illustrates ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s engagement with intellectuals and leaders of thought on the subject of the implementation of peace. His example has continuing relevance for the state of the world and the discourse on peace in the twenty-first century.
Mahmoudi and Khan’s A World Without War is a clear and accessible exposition of the Bahá’í concept of peace, helpful to any reader who wishes to advance in understanding of the fundamental purpose and essential character of the Bahá’í Faith, its organizing principles and administrative structures, and their relevance to the future development of new global institutions and relationships of governance. —Tiffani Betts Razavi, DPhil. Oxon, Visiting Research Professor at the University of Maryland and Bahá’í Chair for World Peace
A World Without War is comprehensive and essential reading for greater understanding of the Bahá’í Faith and its founder / leaders. —Professor Wilma King, Arvarh E. Strickland Professor Emerita at the University of Missouri-Columbia and author of Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America
Through their reflections on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s lifelong engagement in public discussion, the authors reveal how the Bahá’í approach to peace is best understood not as one political cause among others, but as a first-order concern of moral beings collectively building an interdependent civilization. —Vafa Ghazavi, Lecturer in Politics at Pembroke College, University of Oxford
Hoda Mahmoudi
In this study, Hoda Mahmoudi addresses themes central to building a more peaceful world, including human nature and its capacity to mobilize for good and ill, the pace and scope of changes shaping global conditions, and the role of education in transforming not only individuals but also societies at large. First presented in November 2012 as the Inaugural Lecture of the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, Vision and Prospects for World Peace shares a concept of peace-building called a “worldview approach.” “This approach,” writes Professor Mahmoudi, “moves beyond nationalism and particularism and instead embraces a global, or ‘globalizing,’ view of peace that significantly expands and enriches the prevailing, Western-oriented model of peace education.” Also included are introductory remarks by John Townshend, Kenneth Bowers, Dorothy Nelson, and Suheil Bushrui.
Book Chapters
Abraham and the Secular (2021)
Chapter 5: The Baha’i Faith: Interface between the Secular and Religious
Hoda Mahmoudi
Different religions and different religious beliefs generate principles that manifest themselves in different ways, at different times, in different places. In theory, one should be able to trace a faith’s principles and activities in any number of real-lived circumstances, across a variety of places, in order to determine how the faith’s principles are enacted. Many scholars have described how Christian, Jewish, and Muslim principles have been applied in a variety of societies, in many places throughout the world. The Bahá’í Faith—a monotheistic faith that began less than 200 years ago—has a rich history of faith and principle applied and lived, in diverse conditions in the world, including religious and secular realms. This chapter examines the activities and foundation of the Bahá’í Faith in the world, its iterations, underlying principles, and connecting concepts.
Chapter 32: Peace
Hoda Mahmoudi
The World of the Bahá’í Faith is an outstanding guide to the Bahá’í Faith and its culture in all its geographical and historical diversity. Written by a distinguished team of international contributors, this volume explores the origin of this religion and contains substantial thematic articles on the living experience of the global Bahá’í community.
Chapter 12: The Bahá'í Faith
Bani Dugal, Hoda Mahmoudi, Ulrich Gollmer
In this chapter the co-authors examine how the Bahá'í Faith understands sustainable development and contributes to it.
Journal Articles
Tiffani Betts Razavi and Hoda Mahmoudi
Despite attention to the importance of the role of women in peacemaking, there is a curious gap in the peace education literature in gender differences research and study of the specific impact of peace education on girls and women. In this article, we explore some of the reasons for this trend and propose that looking for differences is important to maintain awareness of gendered experiences, the settings in which they exist, and those in which they are absent. Further, we suggest that the principles underpinning the approach to peace and peace pedagogies, in this case Bahá’í concepts of human nobility, the equality of women and men, and the oneness of humanity, and related discursive values, help to foster ‘equal benefit’ environments. We describe our exercise of disaggregating pre- and post-course responses from a Bahá’í-inspired university peace education classroom of twenty students, findings of overall similarity, and particular themes in some women’s responses. Finally, we discuss the lessons learned from an exploratory stance: developing an approach to discourse analysis that focuses on pedagogical insight, the creation of an ‘equal benefit’ learning experience, drawing out strengths and building new capacity in the classroom, and using student perceptions to improve research and practice.
Tiffani Betts Razavi and Hoda Mahmoudi
This article describes a Bahá’í concept of peace in the context of discussions about the nature and focus of peace education, in particular the role of moral education as an element of peace education. It introduces the notions of human nobility and the oneness of humanity as the moral basis for holistic peace within a framework of the collective social evolution of humanity, and explores the idea of identifying, understanding, and removing barriers to unity, specifically in the form of inequalities and prejudices, as the foundation of an approach to peace education. The application of such an approach to a university level course is shared through a case study of ‘The Problem of Prejudice’, offered by the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland, College Park. Key strands of content and pedagogy are described, and qualitative data from students participating in the course in 2021 (n = 20), collected in the form of self-perceptions of changes in knowledge, skills, attitudes and commitment, are presented. The article concludes with a discussion of the learning gained from this study and how a Bahá’í concept of peace may serve as a resource for university peace educators and students.
The Split That Isn't (2021)
Hoda Mahmoudi
International Journal for the Historiography of Education Volume 10: Issue 2, October 2021
Hoda Mahmoudi
Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte (Journal of Religious and Cultural Studies) Volume 72 : Issue 3, June 2020
Hoda Mahmoudi
Contexts, 18(3), 14–19.
Kate Seaman
Global Governance. 2019. 25(1), 47-76.
Carla Barqueiro, Kate Seaman, and Katherine Teresa Towey
Politics and Governance. 2016. 4(3).
Hoda Mahmoudi
The Journal of Baha’i Studies V. 22, no.1/4, March-December, 2012.
