Sexual Politics in Modern Iran

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).

• Part I. Pre-modern Practices: 1. Formal marriage; 2. Slave concubinage, temporary marriage, and harem wives; 3. Class, status-defined homosexuality, and rituals of courtship; Part II. Toward a Westernized Modernity: 4. On the road to an ethos of monogamous, heterosexual marriage; 5. Redefining purity, unveiling bodies, shifting desires; 6. Imperialist politics, romantic love, and the impasse over women's suffrage; 7. Suffrage, marriage reforms, and the threat of female sexuality; 8. The rise of leftist guerrilla organizations and Islamism; Part III. Forging an Islamist Modernity and Beyond: 9. The Islamic revolution, its sexual economy, and the Left; 10. Islamist women and the emergence of Islamic feminism; 11. Birth control, female sexual awakening, and the gay lifestyle; Conclusion: toward a new Muslim-Iranian sexuality for the twenty-first century.

'… the work is seminal and extraordinary. Janet Afary has raised a high bar on the many, many issues surrounding the politics of gender and sexuality in Iran.' Thomas Ricks