The question of ‘women and gender in the Middle East’ is usually treated as a distinct theme in Middle East Studies. But women and the question of gender are internal to every episode of Middle East history, every movement, war and nation.

[LECTURE SLIDES]

Seminar Questions:

In what ways did Quranic reforms significantly enhance the status of women? (Esposito)

In what ways did the ‘British colonial presence and discursive input’ shape the emergence of a ‘new discourse of the veil’ in Egypt in the late 19^thand early 20^thcenturies? (Ahmed)

What does Ahmed mean when she says that feminism or ideas of feminism and Anthropology were 'colonialism’s two handmaids’?

Do Muslim women (still) need saving? Discuss the problems with the rhetoric of 'saving Muslim women.' (Abu Lughod)

Readings:

John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 121-130.

Leila Ahmed, Woman and Gender in Islam (Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 144-168.

Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 27-53.

Recommended Readings:

• Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem (University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
• Julie Peteet, Authenticity and Gender: The presentation of Culture in Arab Women: Old boundaries, new frontiers, J. Tucker, ed. (Georgetown University Press, 1993), pp. 49-60.
• Leslie Pierce, The Imperial Harem: Women and sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 1993).
• Arlene Macleod, Women's Symbolic Action: The new viewing in lower-middle class Cairo in Accommodating protest: working women, the new veiling, and change in Cairo (Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 97-124.
• Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, eds. Opening the Gates of Arab Feminist Writing (Indiana University Press, 2004).
• Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (University of California Press, 2005).
• Lila Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton University Press, 1998).