Claudia Yaghoobi

Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Claudia Yaghoobi studies Iranian culture through gender, sexuality and diaspora, with a particular interest in the people written history has kept at its edges: women, along with sexual, ethnic or religious minorities.

Her books range from ʿAttar’s Sufi poetry to temporary marriage in modern Iranian film, from the Iranian Armenian diaspora to the #MeToo movement in Iran. Her next monograph, Translating a Revolution, is due from UNC Press in March 2027.

Research and Publications

Four monographs, one edited volume

Book cover. Black background with the title in white capitals above a red circle filled with a collage: a woman’s legs in patterned stockings with heeled shoes, a clock, red flowers. The author’s name sits at the lower right.

2027 · Forthcoming

Translating a Revolution: Voices of Armenian Women from Iran to the US.

University of North Carolina Press, March 17, 2027.

2023
Transnational Culture in the Iranian Armenian Diaspora.
Edinburgh University Press, 2023.
2023
The #MeToo Movement in Iran: Reporting Sexual Violence and Harassment
Edited volume.
IB Tauris/Bloomsbury Press, 2023.
2020
Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Iranian Film and Literature.
Cambridge University Press, 2020.
2017
Subjectivity in ‘Attar, Persian Sufism, and European Mysticism.
Purdue University Press, 2017.
(translated into Persian, 2021)

About

Whose stories are told? Whose experiences remain at the margins? And how can the humanities create space for voices and communities that have too often been overlooked?

Claudia Yaghoobi is Roshan Distinguished Professor of Persian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A scholar of Iranian cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, and diaspora studies, she centers the voices and communities that have often remained at the margins of literary, cultural, and historical narratives, particularly women and sexual, ethnic, and religious minorities.

Her scholarship spans classical Persian literature and Sufism, gender and body politics in modern Iranian literature and film, Iranian Armenian diaspora and transnational culture, and contemporary movements addressing gender and sexual violence in Iran. She is the author of Subjectivity in ‘Attar, Persian Sufism, and European Mysticism (Purdue University Press, 2017), Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Persian Literature and Film (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Transnational Culture in the Iranian Armenian Diaspora (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), and editor of The #MeToo Movement in Iran: Reporting Sexual Violence and Harassment (I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2023). Her fourth monograph, Translating a Revolution: Armenian Women’s Voices from Iran to the US, is forthcoming from UNC Press in March 2027.

Across her research, teaching, academic leadership, and public humanities work, Yaghoobi is interested in how the humanities can create space for overlooked voices, foster difficult conversations, and connect scholarship to the communities and histories it seeks to understand.