Sexual Politics in Modern Iran

Janet Afary is a native of Iran and a leading historian. Her work focuses on gender and sexuality and draws on her experience of growing up in Iran and her involvement with Iranian women of different ages and social strata. These observations, and a wealth of historical documents, form the kernel of this book, which charts the history of the nation's sexual revolution from the nineteenth century to today. What comes across is the extraordinary resilience of the Iranian people, who have drawn on a rich social and cultural heritage to defy the repression and hardship of the Islamist state and its predecessors. It is this resilience, the author concludes, which forms the basis of a sexual revolution taking place in Iran today, one that is promoting reforms in marriage and family laws, and demanding more egalitarian gender and sexual relations.

Author: Janet Afary
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 04/09/2009
Pages: 444
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780521727082

Review Citation(s):
New York Review of Books 07/02/2009 pg. 53
Choice 03/01/2010

About the Author
Afary, Janet: - Janet Afary is Professor of History and Women's Studies in the Department of History at Purdue University. Her previous publications include The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (1996) and, with Kevin Anderson, the award-winning Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (2005).