Janet Afary is a native of Iran and a historian of modern Iran. She has an MA in Linguistics from Tehran University and a PhD in History and Near East Studies from the University of Michigan. Afary holds the Mellichamp Chair in Global Religion and Modernity at the University of California Santa Barbara, where she is a Professor of Religious Studies and Feminist Studies.
Previously she taught at the Department of History and the Program in Women's Studies at Purdue University, where she was appointed a University Faculty Scholar. Her books include: Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (2009); The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (1996); and (with Kevin B. Anderson) Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (2005).
