Nayereh Tohidi


Nayereh Esfahlani Tohidi is an Iranian-born American professor, researcher, and academic administrator. Tohidi is a professor emerita and former chair of gender and women’s studies, and the founding director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at California State University, Northridge.
She is also a research associate at the Center for Near Eastern Studies of University of California, Los Angeles, where she had coordinated the Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran since 2003. She specializes in the fields of gender, Islam, feminism, modernity, and democracy; ethnicity and ethno-religious movements; and human and women's rights in the Persianate and Turkic Societies of the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Career

Her teaching and research areas include sociology of gender, religion, ethnicity and democracy in the Middle East and post-Soviet Central Eurasia, especially Iran and Azerbaijan. She is the recipient of several grants, fellowships and research awards, including a year of Fulbright lectureship and research at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan; post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University; the Hoover Institute of Stanford University; the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and the Keddie-Balzan Fellowship at the Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA.
She has held visiting positions at the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, Harvard University, University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California. In 2015, she was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop and launch a minor in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in California State University, Northridge.
Tohidi's publications include editorship or authorship of Globalization, Gender and Religion: The Politics of Women’s Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts; Women in Muslim Societies: Diversity within Unity; and Feminism, Democracy and Islamism in Iran. Her work has appeared in Ms. magazine''.''

Education

Publications

Books

Feminism, Demokracy ve Islamgarayi .
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Selected articles

  • in afkar/idées: Revue trimestrielle pour le dialogue entre le Maghreb, ľ Espagne et ľ Europe, No. 23, automne 2009, pp. 42–46.
  • in Informed Comment, September 3, 2009
  • in Women's e NEWS, 9/17/2008
  • “Change in the ‘Family Law,’ the Last Stage of Secularization?”] In The Feminist School, June 17, 2008, pp. 1-22
  • in VANGURDIA Dossier: Iran por dentro, Numero 24, Julio/Septembre 2007: 90-95.
  • “Ta`amol Mahali-Jahani Feminism dar Jonbesh-e Zanan-e Iran” in Arash: A Persian Monthly of Culture and Social Affairs, No. 100, October 2007: 163-168 www.arashmag.com
  • “One Million Sisters: US Feminists Rally in Support of Women’s Rights in Iran”. In Ms. Magazine, Fall 2007, p. 18.
  • , in Open Democracy
  • , The International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, Vol. 7, Issue 3
  • “In Memoriam: On Parvin Paidar” in Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 39:2, :
  • , in The Los Angeles Times
  • “Women, Civil Society, and NGOs in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan,” in International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, Vol. 7, No. 1
  • “No to Forced Veiling and No to Forced Unveiling: An Analysis of the French Law Banning the Headscarf” in Iranian Feminists Tribune,
  • “The Iranian Feminist Movement’s Global Connections” in Journal of Goft-O-Gu, No. 38, Azar 1382, Tehran: 25–49.
  • “Women’s Rising Self-Consciousness and Empowerment versus Recent Cases of Misogyny in Iran,” in Iran-Emrooz, 25 Shahrivar 1382, in Persian
  • “’Zanan’ Has Come to Bridge, Not to Separate" in Zanan, Vo. 12, No. 100, Khordad 1382.
  • “Student Movement: The Harbinger of a New Era in Iran” in ISIM Newsletter, No. 4.
  • “Women and Rights in Central Asia” in CIRA Bulletin, Vol. 15, No. 1.
  • “Jensiyyat, Moderniyyat, ve Demokracy, Part II” in Jens-e Dovvom Vol. 4 : 26–42.