Afsaneh Najmabadi is the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her book, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), received the 2005 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association. With Kathryn Babayan, she co-edited Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Middle Eastern Monographs, 2008). Her latest book, Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (Duke University Press, 2014) was a finalist for Lambda Literary Award in 2014, received the 2014 Joan Kelly prize from the American Historical Association for best book in women’s history and feminist theory, and was a co-winner of 2015 John Boswell prize, LBGT History, American Historical Association. A recent book conversation on New Books in Islamic Studies features this book: http://newbooksinislamicstudies.com/2015/12/30/afaneh-najmabadi-professing-selves-transsexuality-and-same-sex-desire-in-contemporary-iran-duke-up-2013/
Najmabadi leads a digital archive and website, Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran (www.qajarwomen.org). The project has been awarded three two-year grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was recognized by the White House Office of Public Engagement in May of 2012.