Janet Afary

Janet Afary is a Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Previously she held the Endowed Mellichamp Chair in Global Religion at UC Santa Barbara and was a University Scholar at Purdue University. Dr. Afary received her PhD with distinction from the University of Michigan. Her books include: The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (Columbia University Press, 1996, winner of Dehkhoda Institute Book Award); (with Kevin B. Anderson) Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (University of Chicago Press, 2005, winner of the Latifeh Yarshater Book Award for Iranian Women’s Studies; Honorable Mention by the Association for Humanist Sociology); Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2009, winner of the British-Kuwait Friendship Society book prize for best scholarly book in Middle East Studies published in the UK); and (with Kamran Afary) Molla Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster (Edinburgh University Press, 2022, winner of the British-Kuwait  Friendship Society Book Prize and the Eugenia M. Palmegian Prize from the American Historical Association). She has served as president of several academic associations including the Association for Iranian Studies, the Coordinating Council for Women in History (CCWH-AHA), and the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS-MESA).