Janet Afary

(video) Gender Reforms in the Pahlavi Era: Shattering Old Gender and Sexual Norms of Iranian Society

olibroman — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:00:10 +0000

Professor Janet Afary, University of California, Santa Barbara, lecture on the modernization projects of the Pahlavi government. “The projects shattered the old gender and sexual norms of Iranian society in unprecedented ways. Many urban homes had television by the late 1960s and going to the movies was a popular form of entertainment. The advertising industry relentlessly propagated images of a more modern feminine body and a Western lifestyle, while satirical magazines published cartoons featuring half-naked women. However, these developments also became the key factor cementing a new political alliance between Islamists and leftists ”

Portuguese Translation of “Foucault and the Iranian Revolution”

olibroman — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:00:43 +0000

Foucault and the Iranian Revolution – by Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson – was issued in Portuguese in March 2011 by the Brazilian publisher Realizaçoes Editora (Sao Paulo):

O filósofo Michel Foucault estava trabalhando como correspondente especial do Corriere della Sera e do Nouvel Observateur em 1978 quando os protestos contra o xá atingiram o auge. Durante esse período pouco conhecido de Foucault como jornalista, ele viajou ao Irã, encontrou-se com líderes do porte do Aiatolá Khomeini e escreveu uma série de artigos sobre a revolução.

Foucault e a Revolução Iraniana é a primeira análise extensiva e detalhada desses ensaios sobre o Irã. Esses escritos provocantes, incluídos aqui em sua totalidade como traduções anotadas, são essenciais para a compreensão da história e para o futuro do relacionamento entre o Ocidente e o Irã, e mais genericamente, para o entendimento do islã político. Este livro, que contém a tradução completa dos artigos de Foucault sobre a revolução iraniana, é uma leitura essencial para compreender suas posições políticas em geral e sua concepção de poder, bem como sua política sexual.

See it at Realizaçoes Editora

Afary’s Book “Sexual Politics in Moderrn Iran” Gets 2010 BRISMES Prize

olibroman — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 08:00:14 +0000

Sexual Politics in Modern Iran by Janet Afary (Cambridge University Press). The reviewer describes this work as an “extremely sophisticated” history of sexual politics in modern Iran. “Based on extensive research, nuanced analysis, and astonishing erudition, the book is sure to be a standard for years to come”. It sketches a process of transformation from pre-modern times to a Westernised modernity and an Islamist modern sexuality. The author, evidently aware of the contested nature of writings on sexuality, gives a sense of the ways in which the transformations described were at once affected by larger political movements and were influential in shaping them.

Link

American Social Democrats, the Democrat Party of Iran, Iran-i Naw: A Secret Camaraderie

olibroman — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:01:17 +0000

Social Democracy and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911

olibroman — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:49:51 +0000

Afary's book "Sexual Politics in Moderrn Iran" gets favorable review in "Choice"

olibroman — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:01:21 +0000

March 2010: Editors’ Picks. Choice, v.47, no. 07, March 2010.

Written by a historian of Iran, this volume is a study of the contentious issues of gender and sexuality in modern Iranian politics (19th century to the present day). Afary (history and women’s studies, Purdue) bases her work on the published literature, sources available only electronically, some interviews, and a brief visit to Tehran in 2005. Many books on this subject already exist, but this new one offers a fresh perspective. Afary’s main theme is that veiling and gender separation in Iran preserved male privileges in homosocial spaces that would otherwise be lost if women entered public spaces. She discusses how the Iranian state revived premodern social conventions by reinforcing them through modern means; she outlines the continuing process of producing modern versions of gender inequality.

The inclusion of profiles of some women, such as Zahra Rahnavard (wife of Mir-Hossein Musavi, the runner-up in the tumultuous 2009 presidential election), is informative. With her emphasis on various forms of male homosexuality in Iran through time, Afary has written a useful companion to Afsaneh Najmabadi’s Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards (CH, Jan’06, 43-3098). The volume contains illustrations, including photographs and cartoons, and a lengthy bibliography. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. — L. Beck, Washington University, Saint Louis

(video BBC) A Review of Iranian Women’s Movement

olibroman — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:00:15 +0000

Report from BBC: The struggle for women’s rights broke through some remarkable barriers in 1388. Women defended men in street combats, while male intellectuals donned the veil. BBC Report of the Struggle for Women’s Rights in 1388.

(video BBC) Report on Prisoners’ Wives

olibroman — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:00:38 +0000

Doug Ireland on Sexual Politics in Modern Iran by Janet Afary

olibroman — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:00:46 +0000

Veteran radical journalist Doug Ireland has been a columnist for the Village Voice, the Paris daily Liberation, the New York Observer and many other publications. He is currently the US correspondent and a columnist for the French political-investigative weekly Bakchich, and the International Affairs Editor for Gay City News, the largest queer weekly in New York City, for which he has reported extensively on the persecution, torture and state murder of gays in Iran, where at least nine gay men are currently awaiting execution for sodomy. In this post Doug writes about Janet Afary’s Sexual Politics in Modern Iran.

Read the full article…

The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary Iran

olibroman — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:00:26 +0000

Speakers:

Erika Friedl, Western Michigan University
Sondra Hale, UCLA
Mary Hegland, Santa Clara University
Azadeh Kian, University of Paris VII – Diderot
Nikki Keddie, UCLA
Pardis Mahdavi, Pomona College