Janet Afary

She received her M.A. degree from University of Tehran.[1] In 1991, she received her PhD in History and Near East studies from the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor.[2] Afary is married to Kevin B. Anderson, a fellow professor at UCSB.

Her research field includes politics of contemporary Iran and gender, sexuality in modern Middle East, Constitutionalism, Civil Liberties, and the Public Sphere in the Middle East, Cinema and Popular Culture of the Middle East, Global Feminism, Feminist Theory, Modern Transcaucasia & Central Asia: Art & Folklore. She is known for her writings and research on the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. Her articles have appeared in The Nation, the Guardian, and numerous scholarly journals and edited collections.[3]

Afary is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.[4] She previously taught at in the History Department and Women's Studies at Purdue University.[5][6][7] In the 1980s, she served as the coordinator for the Iranian Jewish Association of California.[8] She has served as president of the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS-MESA), the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS-MESA), and the Coordinating Council for Women in History of the American Historical Association (CCWH-AHA).[9]

• Afary, Janet (1996). The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism. History and Society of the Modern Middle East Series. New York City, New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231103510.
• Afary, Janet; Anderson, Kevin B. (2005). Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226007854. (Winner of the Latifeh Yarshater Book Award for Iranian Women's Studies, 2006)
• Afary, Janet (2009). Sexual Politics in Modern Iran. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107394353. (Winner of the British Society for Middle East Studies Annual Book Prize)
• Charand-o Parand: Revolutionary Satire from Iran, 1907-1909 with John R. Perry, Yale University Press, 2016. (Honourable Mention Lois Roth Persian Translation Prize)[10]
• Afary, Janet; Faust, Jesilyn (2021). Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9780755618286.

• Politics of Iran

• She was the recipient of the Horace H. Rackham Distinguished Dissertation Award from the University of Michigan.[11]
• Afary was awarded the Keddie/Balzan Fellowship by the International Balzan Prize Foundation for the 2008–2009 academic year to work at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).[12]
• Dehkhoda Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Iranian Studies (Germany).[13]

• Official website