Afsane Rezaei completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2020 and joined the Department of English at Utah State University as Assistant Professor of Folklore and American Studies. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersections of folklife, gender, religion, and politics, particularly in Iran and its diaspora in the US. Her research interests include folklore and new media, vernacular religion, and feminist folklore/anthropology. Her previous work on online political humor has appeared in New Directions in Folklore, and her current work on COVID-19 conspiracy narratives in Iran is forthcoming in the Journal of Folklore Research. Her dissertation, based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, focused on relational and intersectional dynamics of agency in Iranian-American women’s shared religious performances and personal narratives. She has published an article in the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies and another in the Journal of Ethnography extending from her dissertation, while simultaneously moving toward completing her first book. A digital exhibit featuring visual data from her dissertation fieldwork was recently published through Utah State’s Special Collections and Archives. In 2020, Afsane was selected as a Research Fellow at the USU Center for Intersectional Gender Studies and Research, where she continues to study Iranian women's use of folklore in the (re)negotiation of their ethnic identity and religious positionality in the U.S.
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