Janet Afary

American writer

Janet Afary is an author, feminist activist and researcher of history, religious studies and women studies. She is a professor and the Mellichamp Chair in Global Religion and Modernity at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

She received her M. A. degree from University of Tehran. In 1991, she received her PhD in History and Near East studies from the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Afary is married to Kevin B. Anderson, a fellow professor at UCSB. Her research fields includes politics of contemporary Iran and gender, sexuality in modern Middle East, constitutionalism, civil liberties, the public sphere in the Middle East, cinema and popular culture of the Middle East, global feminism, feminist theory, modern Transcaucasia & Central Asia: art and 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. Afary is a professor of religious studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. She previously taught at in the History Department and Women's Studies at Purdue University. In the 1980s, she served as the coordinator for the Iranian Jewish Association of California. 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). Dehkhoda Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Iranian Studies (Germany).