Ata Anzali is an Associate Professor of religion at Middlebury College. He is interested in intellectual and social histories of the early modern and modern Iranian religious thought. His first monograph, ‘Mysticism’ in Iran: the Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept examines the emergence of the category of ‘irfan as an alternative to tasawwuf during the Safavid era. He is currently working on a research project that focuses on Mortaza Motahhari (d. 1979), one of the main idealogues of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the social formations and intellectual trajectories that contributed to his thought and prominence.