Afsaneh Najmabadi


Afsāneh Najmābādi is an Iranian-American historian and gender theorist. She is the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University.

Biography

Afsaneh Najmabadi moved as student from University of Tehran to Radcliffe College in 1966. She obtained her BA in physics in 1968 from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and her MA in physics in 1970 from Harvard University. Following this, she pursued social studies, combining academic interests with engagement in social activism, first in the United States of America and later in Iran. She obtained her PhD in sociology in 1984 from University of Manchester, United Kingdom.

Career

Professor Najmabadi has been Nemazee Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, Fellow at Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University, at Harvard Divinity School , at Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, and at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. After nine years of teaching and research at the Department of Women's Studies of Barnard College, in July 2001 she joined Harvard University as Professor of History and of Women's Studies. At present she chairs the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Under her tenure as chair, the Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies changed its name to the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Najmabadi is also Associate Editor of Encyclopaedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, in six volumes.
Professor Najmabadi's most recent research has been concerned with the study of the ways in which concepts and practices of sex and sexuality have transformed in Iran, from the late-nineteenth-century to the present-day Iran.

Political activities

In 1991, she supported U.S. invasion of Iraq and harshly attacked Edward Said for criticizing the attack, describing his view as "rhetorical equivalent of political murder".

Selected publications