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The I.B. Tauris Handbook to Gendering the Histories of the Arab World
The I.B. Tauris Handbook to Gendering the Histories of the Arab World
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Description
In the last 20 years, feminist scholars have radicalised the historiography of the Arab world. Using gendered theorisations, they have rejected the mainstream histories that prioritise 'official' narratives, and they have highlighted the exclusionary effect of patriarchal systems and discourses. This handbook continues their work by using 'gender' as a mode of analysis to produce a new cultural history of the Arab world. In doing so, it presents a new generation with ways to study the region using a 'gender lens' and establishes this approach as a field.
The five thematic parts correspond to specific areas focused on by new cultural historians: histories of practices; histories of representations; narrative sites of memory; histories of material culture; and histories of the body. Each section then provides new knowledge of the Arab world by moving away from the Western colonial gaze and focusing instead on women's everyday experiences and lifeways. Subjects covered include: theoretical perspectives, Islamic law, protest movements and popular culture, as well as women's autobiographies, gendered memory, food, public health and sexualities.
Edited by two pioneering feminist scholars, Hoda Elsadda and Seteney Shami, it draws together the most innovative work of other feminist scholars from across history, anthropology, literature, sociology, psychology, theology, economics, political science, law, and translation studies. The chapters demonstrate that in using gender as a category of analysis, the cultural histories of the Arab world can be rewritten to prioritise lived realities and female voices and perspectives.
Table of Contents
Hoda Elsadda and Seteney Shami
Part One: Histories and Communities of Practice
1- Gendering the Interpretive Tradition
Hadia Mubarak
2- Writing the History of Islamic Family Law: The Arab World
Judith E. Tucker,
3- Gendering Histories of Education
Fida Adely
4- A Labor Analysis of Gender and Resistance in the Middle East and North Africa Region
Fayrouz Yousfi
5- Gendering Protest in the Arab World
Leyla Dakhli
6- Women Doctors and Narratives of Resistance in Egypt
Soha Bayoumi
Part Two: Representations
7- Reading Egyptian Popular Culture Through a Gender-Sensitive Lens
Mounira Soliman
8- Performativity and the Gendered Body in “Arab” Cinema(s)
Viola Shafik
9- Binaries and Beyond: Gendering the Arabic Literary Tradition
Marlé Hammond
10- Arwa Salih's 'The Premature': Gendering the History of the Egyptian Left
Hanan Hammad
Part Three: Narrative Sites of Cultural Memory
11- Nakba Generation Women Resist the 'Gender Logic' Embedded in Colonial Discourse
Laura Khoury
12- Memories from the Alleys of Cairo: Childhood and Adolescent Years of 'Um Badriya, 1940s-1950s
Malak Rouchdy
13- Gendering Histories of Autobiographical Traditions in the Arab World
Nawar Al-Hassan Golley
14-Gendered Memory and Memorialization: Online Sites of Remembrance since the Arab Revolutions
Loubna H. Skalli
Part Four: Material Culture
15-Gendering Arab Food Histories: Critical Approaches to Culinary Knowledge, Space, and Labor
Anny Gaul
16-Feminist Transcultural Resistance through Art in the Maghreb and its Diaspora
Siobhan Shilton
17-Gendering Histories of Modern Arab Art
Kirsten Scheid and Jessica Gerschultz
18-Women and gold: multiple meanings and ambiguous trends
Annelies Moors
Part Five: The Body
19-Urban Masculinities: The Making of Men in Arab Cities
Farha Ghannam
20-Remembering War and Migration: Masculinities and identities in Rural Egypt
Reem Saad
21-Gendering the history of biomedical technologies in the Arab world: The medicalisation of women's sexual and reproductive health in Jordan and Tunisia
Irene Maffi
22-Wars and Destruction Again: Echoes of Health and Gender Struggles in the Arab World
Livia Wick and Mane Basmadjian
Product details
Published | 13 Nov 2025 |
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Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 416 |
ISBN | 9780755648276 |
Imprint | I.B. Tauris |
Series | I B Tauris Handbooks |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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This superb volume features leading scholars in the field and captures the state of the art in gender studies in the Arab world. Its breadth, depth, and interdisciplinarity are impressive, and its cutting-edge research and cogent analysis demonstrate the vibrancy of the field.
Beth Baron, Distinguished Professor, The City College of New York, US
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Cognizant of recent developments toward memory studies, cultural history, and critical theory, the twenty-two essays included in this volume offer a much-needed critique of the meta-categories of colonialism, nationalism and modernism that for a long time have dominated the field of the cultural history of the Arab World. The Handbook does a superb job in defining some of the most interesting work currently being done in the field of cultural history of the Arab World drawing on innovative scholarship by feminist scholars in a plethora of academic disciplines that range from history, anthropology and psychology, to law, literary criticism and translation studies. By paying attention to people's lived experiences and by being sensitive to narratives of marginalized groups, the essays bring to light unchartered territories in histories of the region. The Handbook is indispensable for anyone who wants to rethink the cultural histories of the Arab World in a gendered manner.
Khaled Fahmy, Professor, Tufts University, USA
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Combining the best of cultural history and memory studies and using gender as a multi-disciplinary theoretical lens this valuable Handbook could not be timelier. Appearing at a moment of catastrophic conflict and cataclysmic change in the Arab region, it acts as a powerful riposte and corrective to the effects of geopolitics on the production of knowledge by challenging dominant narratives through its rich compendium of the lived realities of the region and its culture. A must read for anyone with an interest in the Arab region and, more broadly, with gender, culture and memory.
Deniz Kandiyoti , Emerita Professor, SOAS, UK
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The book provides a sophisticated and up to date introduction to diverse disciplinary approaches to gender in the Arab region. Contributors explore the centrality of gender in producing and sustaining the cultural, social and political practices of men and women in the region. The editors frame this work within the transformative potential of the Arab Spring and the evolving conditions of knowledge production amid the ongoing war on Palestinians.
Dina Rizk Khoury, Emerita Professor, George Washington University., USA