About

Janet Afary is a Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and History at the University of California Santa Barbara. She has published extensively on modern Iranian culture and politics, as well as issues of gender, family, intimacy, and sexuality in Muslim-majority societies. She received her PhD with distinction from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has taught at Purdue University where she was appointed University Faculty Scholar. Her scholarly work includes books such as Sexual Politics in Modern Iran, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, and Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, among others. Afary has held the endowed Mellichamp Chair in Global Religion and Modernity at UCSB and has served as president of several academic associations, including the Association for Iranian Studies, the Coordinating Council for Women in History, and the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies. Her articles have appeared in prominent outlets such as The Nation, The Guardian, and The Huffington Post.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Gender studies
• Social Science
• Psychology
• Engineering
• Business
• Economic growth
• Demography
• Social psychology
• History
• Economics
• Law

Selected publications

• The Cause Célèbre of the 1960s: How Iranian Jewish Women Fought for Inheritance and Divorce Rights

  Shofar · 2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract: In 1967 and 1975, the Iranian parliament (the Majlis) passed the most significant legislation regarding women's rights in Iran, known as the Family Protection Law. Muslim Iranian women already had inheritance rights according to the sharia (the Islamic religious law). The law now granted all Iranian women the right to impede polygamy, to initiate divorce (if subject to abuse), and to claim custody of the couple's minor children. The Iranian Jewish rabbinical leadership sought to exclude Iranian Jewish women from these reforms in the name of tradition and religious practice. Iranian Jewish advocates of women's rights decided to challenge this entrenched patriarchy by calling for the implementation of family reform laws that had been ratified in Israel in 1965. This article analyzes the struggles of these Iranian women and the role they played with the support of progressive Jewish Iranian men, Israeli politicians, and Israeli rabbis.

  PublisherDOI

• The Rise of Informal Unions in the MENASA Region

  Journal of Middle East Women s Studies · 2024-09-20

  articleSenior author

  Abstract This article examines the nature of informal marriages using data from a 2018 survey of over ten thousand Facebook users in seven Muslim-majority countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey. The article explores current attitudes toward informal marriages as well as the nature of such unions among the predominantly Sunni and Shiʿi Muslim social-media users who took the survey. First, the article finds that informal marriages have diffused across the Sunni Muslim world. These marriages are not necessarily loveless unions between women of modest means looking for financial support and men seeking legitimate sexual partners. In fact, the survey suggests that women in such unions are less likely to be financially dependent on their partners. Informally married spouses are as likely to say that they love their partners as those who are formally wed. However, this love, whether in formal or informal marriages, does not necessarily entail a deep bond between partners who share their most intimate feelings. Marriage—whether formal or informal—is perceived as fragile, not a lifelong commitment. The rates of divorce in the countries surveyed are approaching those in the West. These informal marriages might therefore be thought of as a new form of cohabitation, a practice increasing throughout the world.

  PublisherDOI

• Afterword

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  other
  PublisherDOI

• The practice of informal marriages in the Muslim world: a comparative portrait

  British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies · 2023-05-25 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Informal marriages have been on the rise in recent years in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (MENASA) region. These unions are different from formal marriages in a number of ways. There are also many factors contributing to the growing popularity of such unions. Both men and women are delaying marriage; rates of formal marriage are declining; and rates of divorce are increasing. Because such unions are generally not registered, it has been difficult to document the growing popularity of this trend. In 2018, we used Facebook (FB) banner ads in seven Muslim-majority countries to survey the young computer-literate populations of Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey, as well as their respective diasporas, to better understand the nature of such unions. Our respondents, we hope, are a representative sample of younger people who are living or have lived in these nations, and who are using this social media site. Over 10,000 respondents provided us with information about their marital status. This paper examines the marital histories of those engaged in informal marriages, their sexual orientations, and the attitudes of formally and informally married respondents about informal marriage. Who engages in informal marriage and what do married people think of this marital form.

  PublisherDOI

• Map of Safavid Empire

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2022-09-30

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• CHAPTER 4 The Wise Fool and the Trickster Nasreddin

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2022-09-30

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• From Bedrooms to Streets: The Rise of a New Generation of Independent Iranian Women

  Freedom of Thought Journal · 2022-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The image of Iran in the global media is that of an ever-expanding authoritarian regime, determined to hold on to its ideological foundations as they were articulated in 1979. However, beneath the surface profound shifts are taking place in Iranian society, particularly in the institution of marriage and sexuality–changes that threaten the core principles of the regime and have substantially weakened its ideological appeal. While the Iranian media presents these changes as highly negative and destructive, in many cases they have also released women from the shackles of outdated notions of “morality” and “propriety,” and made it possible for them to emerge as leaders in the unrelenting grassroots protests against the authoritarian regime. This article looks at some of these shifts in the last decade and the ways in which they continue to threaten the ideological fabric of a regime that has built its legitimacy on old notions of justice, gender segregation, family values, and supposed piety and morality.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• CHAPTER 1 South Caucasus at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2022-09-30

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• CHAPTER 5 Recreating the Trickster Tales and Tropes in Azerbaijani Language

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2022-09-30

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Molla Nasreddin

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2022-09-30 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Explores the iconic illustrated periodical Mollā Nasreddin , whose editors, writers and illustrators were Azerbaijani Muslims and Georgians of South Caucasus Provides a new reading of the text and illustrations of one of the most well-known journals in the Muslim region in the early 20th century Draws upon primary and secondary materials in Azerbaijani, Persian, Russian and Georgian languages, as well as English and French sources, collected on trips to Baku, Tbilisi, Moscow and Tehran, and translated with the help of a team of researchers from the region Gives insight to the first sophisticated graphic periodical to present a social democratic and anti-colonial discourse that reflected the points of view of the Muslim world, especially the impoverished classes Shows the significance of cultural exchanges among several transnational diasporic communities before the rise of modern nation states in the Middle East and Transcaucasia Carefully curates a selection of 250 images from Mollā Nasreddin reproduced in colour throughout the book In the early twentieth century, a group of Azerbaijani and Georgian artists and intellectuals reinterpreted the Middle Eastern trickster figure Nasreddin in their periodical Mollā Nasreddin . They used folklore, visual art and satire to disseminate a consciously radical and social democratic discourse on religion, gender, sexuality and power in South Caucasus and Iran. The periodical reached tens of thousands of people in the Muslim world, impacting the thinking of a generation. This highly-illustrated book explores the milieu in which Mollā Nasreddin was born, the way the periodical recreated the trickster trope, and the influence of European graphic artists, especially Francisco Goya, on the journal. It focuses on the most creative period, 1906-11, when the journal reflected the social and political concerns of three major upheavals: the 1905 Russian Revolution, the 1906–1911 Iranian Constitutional Revolution, and the 1908 Young Turk Movement.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Vanessa Martín

  Royal Holloway University of London

  172 shared

• Omidyar Mir-Djalali

  171 shared

• Roshan Chair

  171 shared

• Touraj Atabaki

  International Institute of Social History

  171 shared

• Rudi Matthee

  University of Delaware

  171 shared

• Santa Barbara

  Yale University

  171 shared

• Joanna de Groot

  University of York

  171 shared

• Abbas Amanat

  Yale University

  171 shared

Awards & honors

• Hamid Naficy Book Award Association for Iranian Studies (Hon…
• British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in Middle Easte…
• American Historical Association (AHA) Book Prize (2023)
• Lois Roth Persian Translation Book Prize (Honorable Mention)…
• British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in Middle Easte…