Janet Afary is Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, US. She is the author of Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (2009, winner of the British Society for Middle East Studies Annual Book Prize), The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism. She has co-authored Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (with Kevin B. Anderson, 2005, winner of the Latifeh Yarshater Book Award for Iranian Women’s Studies); and co-authored Molla Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster (with Kamran Afary, 2024, winner of the Eugenia M. Palmegian Prize from the American Historical Association)