Afsaneh Najmabadi | Harvard University (original) (raw)

Papers by Afsaneh Najmabadi

Routledge eBooks, May 18, 2022

Iran in the 20th Century Historiography and Political Culture, 2009

Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards, 2019

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2004

For the past seven years, Iran has been in the grip of a literary event. A novel, Bamdad-i khumar... more For the past seven years, Iran has been in the grip of a literary event. A novel, Bamdad-i khumar (The Morning After), written by a hitherto unknown woman, Fattanah Hajj Sayyidjavadi, (b. 1945), became an overnight best-seller and has so remained. From the start, the book has generated heated debates over its literary and socio-cultural merits. Most critics and readers have very strong opinions about the novel. One reader, another first-time writer, was so deeply angered by what she considered to be the novel's exaggerated female-centeredness and its unfairness to men that she decided to rewrite the novel through the voice of its male anti-hero.

Recent developments in digital humanities have posed new challenges as well as possibilities for ... more Recent developments in digital humanities have posed new challenges as well as possibilities for doing history differently. Much debate has been focused on whether-given the quantity of and the ease of access to the archives that digitization has made available to scholars-methods of quantitative social science research could be meaningfully employed by historians and scholars of the humanities. 1 Quantitative analysis of text-mining, for instance, has been used to find more precisely patterns of language change-such as when "throwed" gave way to "threw" and "thrown." For historians, this may seem a trivial exercise. But consider the following two examples.

Choice Reviews Online, 2014

History of the Present, 2012

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2008

deeply indebted and grateful to all the people involved, but as at present I cannot thank the fir... more deeply indebted and grateful to all the people involved, but as at present I cannot thank the first group by name, I opted for skipping all names; except for Susan Stryker whose critical feedback and skillful editing transformed a very raw essay into a more readable text.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2013

In recent decades, Iran has witnessed radical transformations concerning the conceptualization of... more In recent decades, Iran has witnessed radical transformations concerning the conceptualization of and procedural standards for changing sex. Psychologists, medical and legal practitioners, law enforcement officials, and scholars of fiqh have debated the advisability (in debates among health and legal professionals) or the permissibility (among scholars of fiqh) of sex-change. This article asks what historical transformations of the concept ofjins/genus have informed the debates and enabled the contemporary dominant concepts and practices that shape them. How hasjinscome to mean sex and how does this matter? The article first maps out the historical genealogy of these reconfigurations. What were some of the 19th- and pre-19th-century concepts that could be considered disparate precedents to this cluster around sex/jins? It then reviews some of the late-19th- and 20th-century reshaping of biomedical knowledge and marital practices that have contributed to the contemporary meanings ofj...

The American Historical Review, 2008

ISLAMICATE SEXUALITIES Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire Edited by Kathryn Babay... more ISLAMICATE SEXUALITIES Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire Edited by Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi with contributions by Dina Al-Kassim, Sahar Amer, Brad Epps, Frederic Lagrange, Leyla Rouhi, Everett K. Rowson, and Valerie Traub

Social Research: An International Quarterly

This essay offers an account of the contemporary diagnostic and treatment procedures of transexua... more This essay offers an account of the contemporary diagnostic and treatment procedures of transexuality in Iran, situating the official process in a discursive nexus that is engaged in establishing and securing a distinction between the acceptable "true" transexual and other categories that might be confused with it, most notably the wholly unacceptable category of the "true" homosexual. In this process, the category of transexual is made legible as an acceptable form of existence by the condensed working of the legal, the Islamic jurisprudential [fiqhi], the bio-medico-psycho-sexological, and the various contingents of the forces of coercion-which we often call "the state." This nexus is as well constituted and authorized by transgender/sexuals' practices of everyday life, self-definitions, and selfproductions.

Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran, 2013

proFessing selves: sexual/gender proFiCienCies 277 other spaces of social presence. In Riley's wo... more proFessing selves: sexual/gender proFiCienCies 277 other spaces of social presence. In Riley's words, "My self might be considered, tautly, as consisting of nothing more than what it does."8 This is not the same as "the relational self," which has its own genealogy in psychology. The relational self in that discourse still references a deep self that acquires its depth through relations with other deep selves.9 I am attempting to grapple with a sense of self that is not necessarily and coherently perceived and experienced as anything to do with some deep inner truth about oneself, but ventures on "a profound superficiality."10 From this viewpoint, I find de Certeau's proposition that "each individual is a locus in which an incoherent (and often contradictory) plurality of such relational determinations interact"11 more productive: This is a concept of a networked self-in-conduct, where performances of self are situated in a space defined by numerous connections with other selves, within numerous institutional sites, the intersection of any number of which produce a contingency of located-ness, and thus a sense of self contingent to that knot-a "working conjunction," "a bundle of results, a cluster of effects and outcomes."12 Erving Goffman's concept of self is similarly helpful: "The self, then, as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited."13 Goffman's idea would emphasize that the produced self will not be one character because its self-ness at any particular time and place will depend on a contingent scene of performance. In Butler's articulation, "it is an identity tenuously constituted in time" and "not predetermined by some manner of interior essence."14 The place and context will differ from one performance to another, and the audience will differ from one performance to another; different selves are thus produced all the time and any requirement of coherence among all these selves would fail to take into its understanding this always-changing genesis. Despite its central argument around the performative constitution of self, Goffman's analysis of "whether it [the self as a performed character] will be credited or discredited" at times tends to reintroduce a distinction between a self and its performances. For instance, he speaks of "the dissonance created by a misspelled word, or by a slip that is not quite concealed by a skirt" (55), or that "the impression of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thing that can be shattered by very minor mishaps. The expressive coherence that is required in performances points out a crucial discrepancy between our all-toohuman selves and our socialized selves" (56). Goffman's analysis of the many sites and possibilities of "misrepresentation," while focused on its reception, From Professing Selves by Najmabadi, Afsaneh.

Iranian Studies, 1996

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Iranian Studies, 1999

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 140.247.180.49 on Fri, 04 Sep 2015 00:52:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Iranian Studies, volume 32, number 2, Spring 1999 Afsaneh Najmabadi Reading-and Enjoying-"Wiles of Women" Stories as a Feminist' IN A BEAUTIFUL ESSAY, TITLED "JUSTIFY MY LOVE," DANIEL BOYARIN

Iranian Studies, 2001

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. QAJAR IRAN (1785-1925) BEGAN WMI NOTIONS OF BEAULTY THAT WERE largely gender-undifferentiated; that is, beautiful men and women were depicted with very similar facial and bodily features.' Sometimes the only way one can tell who is male or female is through style of headgear. Other times it remains very difficult to tell if we are looking at a man or a woman:2

Journal of Women's History, 2006

Wsq: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2008

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1997

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 20:25:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Int. J. Middle East Stud. 29 (1997), 485-508. Printed in the United States of America Gayane Karen Merguerian and Afsaneh Najmabadi ZULAYKHA AND YUSUF: WHOSE "BEST STORY"?

Routledge eBooks, May 18, 2022

Iran in the 20th Century Historiography and Political Culture, 2009

Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards, 2019

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2004

For the past seven years, Iran has been in the grip of a literary event. A novel, Bamdad-i khumar... more For the past seven years, Iran has been in the grip of a literary event. A novel, Bamdad-i khumar (The Morning After), written by a hitherto unknown woman, Fattanah Hajj Sayyidjavadi, (b. 1945), became an overnight best-seller and has so remained. From the start, the book has generated heated debates over its literary and socio-cultural merits. Most critics and readers have very strong opinions about the novel. One reader, another first-time writer, was so deeply angered by what she considered to be the novel's exaggerated female-centeredness and its unfairness to men that she decided to rewrite the novel through the voice of its male anti-hero.

Recent developments in digital humanities have posed new challenges as well as possibilities for ... more Recent developments in digital humanities have posed new challenges as well as possibilities for doing history differently. Much debate has been focused on whether-given the quantity of and the ease of access to the archives that digitization has made available to scholars-methods of quantitative social science research could be meaningfully employed by historians and scholars of the humanities. 1 Quantitative analysis of text-mining, for instance, has been used to find more precisely patterns of language change-such as when "throwed" gave way to "threw" and "thrown." For historians, this may seem a trivial exercise. But consider the following two examples.

Choice Reviews Online, 2014

History of the Present, 2012

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2008

deeply indebted and grateful to all the people involved, but as at present I cannot thank the fir... more deeply indebted and grateful to all the people involved, but as at present I cannot thank the first group by name, I opted for skipping all names; except for Susan Stryker whose critical feedback and skillful editing transformed a very raw essay into a more readable text.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2013

In recent decades, Iran has witnessed radical transformations concerning the conceptualization of... more In recent decades, Iran has witnessed radical transformations concerning the conceptualization of and procedural standards for changing sex. Psychologists, medical and legal practitioners, law enforcement officials, and scholars of fiqh have debated the advisability (in debates among health and legal professionals) or the permissibility (among scholars of fiqh) of sex-change. This article asks what historical transformations of the concept ofjins/genus have informed the debates and enabled the contemporary dominant concepts and practices that shape them. How hasjinscome to mean sex and how does this matter? The article first maps out the historical genealogy of these reconfigurations. What were some of the 19th- and pre-19th-century concepts that could be considered disparate precedents to this cluster around sex/jins? It then reviews some of the late-19th- and 20th-century reshaping of biomedical knowledge and marital practices that have contributed to the contemporary meanings ofj...

The American Historical Review, 2008

ISLAMICATE SEXUALITIES Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire Edited by Kathryn Babay... more ISLAMICATE SEXUALITIES Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire Edited by Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi with contributions by Dina Al-Kassim, Sahar Amer, Brad Epps, Frederic Lagrange, Leyla Rouhi, Everett K. Rowson, and Valerie Traub

Social Research: An International Quarterly

This essay offers an account of the contemporary diagnostic and treatment procedures of transexua... more This essay offers an account of the contemporary diagnostic and treatment procedures of transexuality in Iran, situating the official process in a discursive nexus that is engaged in establishing and securing a distinction between the acceptable "true" transexual and other categories that might be confused with it, most notably the wholly unacceptable category of the "true" homosexual. In this process, the category of transexual is made legible as an acceptable form of existence by the condensed working of the legal, the Islamic jurisprudential [fiqhi], the bio-medico-psycho-sexological, and the various contingents of the forces of coercion-which we often call "the state." This nexus is as well constituted and authorized by transgender/sexuals' practices of everyday life, self-definitions, and selfproductions.

Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran, 2013

proFessing selves: sexual/gender proFiCienCies 277 other spaces of social presence. In Riley's wo... more proFessing selves: sexual/gender proFiCienCies 277 other spaces of social presence. In Riley's words, "My self might be considered, tautly, as consisting of nothing more than what it does."8 This is not the same as "the relational self," which has its own genealogy in psychology. The relational self in that discourse still references a deep self that acquires its depth through relations with other deep selves.9 I am attempting to grapple with a sense of self that is not necessarily and coherently perceived and experienced as anything to do with some deep inner truth about oneself, but ventures on "a profound superficiality."10 From this viewpoint, I find de Certeau's proposition that "each individual is a locus in which an incoherent (and often contradictory) plurality of such relational determinations interact"11 more productive: This is a concept of a networked self-in-conduct, where performances of self are situated in a space defined by numerous connections with other selves, within numerous institutional sites, the intersection of any number of which produce a contingency of located-ness, and thus a sense of self contingent to that knot-a "working conjunction," "a bundle of results, a cluster of effects and outcomes."12 Erving Goffman's concept of self is similarly helpful: "The self, then, as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited."13 Goffman's idea would emphasize that the produced self will not be one character because its self-ness at any particular time and place will depend on a contingent scene of performance. In Butler's articulation, "it is an identity tenuously constituted in time" and "not predetermined by some manner of interior essence."14 The place and context will differ from one performance to another, and the audience will differ from one performance to another; different selves are thus produced all the time and any requirement of coherence among all these selves would fail to take into its understanding this always-changing genesis. Despite its central argument around the performative constitution of self, Goffman's analysis of "whether it [the self as a performed character] will be credited or discredited" at times tends to reintroduce a distinction between a self and its performances. For instance, he speaks of "the dissonance created by a misspelled word, or by a slip that is not quite concealed by a skirt" (55), or that "the impression of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thing that can be shattered by very minor mishaps. The expressive coherence that is required in performances points out a crucial discrepancy between our all-toohuman selves and our socialized selves" (56). Goffman's analysis of the many sites and possibilities of "misrepresentation," while focused on its reception, From Professing Selves by Najmabadi, Afsaneh.

Iranian Studies, 1996

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Iranian Studies, 1999

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 140.247.180.49 on Fri, 04 Sep 2015 00:52:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Iranian Studies, volume 32, number 2, Spring 1999 Afsaneh Najmabadi Reading-and Enjoying-"Wiles of Women" Stories as a Feminist' IN A BEAUTIFUL ESSAY, TITLED "JUSTIFY MY LOVE," DANIEL BOYARIN

Iranian Studies, 2001

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. QAJAR IRAN (1785-1925) BEGAN WMI NOTIONS OF BEAULTY THAT WERE largely gender-undifferentiated; that is, beautiful men and women were depicted with very similar facial and bodily features.' Sometimes the only way one can tell who is male or female is through style of headgear. Other times it remains very difficult to tell if we are looking at a man or a woman:2

Journal of Women's History, 2006

Wsq: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2008

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1997

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 20:25:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Int. J. Middle East Stud. 29 (1997), 485-508. Printed in the United States of America Gayane Karen Merguerian and Afsaneh Najmabadi ZULAYKHA AND YUSUF: WHOSE "BEST STORY"?