Today's Hours
Classes of ladies of cloistered spaces : writing feminist history through biography in fin de siècle Egypt by
xplores the writing and influence of the first Arabic-language global biographical dictionary of women. Zaynab Fawwaz (c.1860-1914) was as a forceful voice in support of women's rights to education and work choices in colonial-era Egypt. Her volume of 453 women's lives, al-Durr al-manthur fi tabaqat rabbat al-khudur (Pearls scattered in times and places: Classes of ladies of cloistered spaces, 1893-6) - featuring Boudicca, Catherine the Great, Zaynab (granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad), Victoria Woodhull, the Turkish poet Sirri Hanim and many others - built on the Arabic-Islamic biographical tradition to produce a work for women in the modern era, grafting European, Turkish, Arab, and Indian life narratives, amongst others onto Arabic literary patterns. In Classes of Ladies of Cloistered Spaces Marilyn Booth argues that Fawwaz's work was less 'exemplary biography' than feminist history, in its exploration of achievement but also of patriarchal trauma in the lives of women across times and places. She traces Fawwaz's creative use of her sources, her presentation of biographical narratives in the context of the political essays she wrote in the Arabic press, her publicised dialogue with the President of the Board of Lady Managers of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition - where she attempted to send the volume - and how her inscription of a feminine ancient history diverged from that of men writing history in 1890s Egypt. Key Features Includes descriptions of biographies of women from the US, Britain, Europe, India, the Maldives, as well as the Middle East (Iran, Turkey and the Arab world) Presents the dictionary as a key text in the debates on gender and national efficacy in 1890s Egypt and Ottoman Syria Takes a close look at issues of text circulation and borrowing Argues that Fawwaz's book can be regarded as 'feminist history'
The long 1890s in Egypt : colonial quiescence, subterranean resistance by
Explores a vital and previously understudied moment in Egypt's modern history Egypt just before political eruption! Turns of the century in Africa's northeastern corner have been critical moments, ushering in overt popular activism in the hope of radical political redirection - as this volume's focus on Egypt's 19th-century fin-de siècle demonstrates. The end of the 19th century in Egypt witnessed crisscrossing and conflicting political currents as well as fluctuating economic, geopolitical, social conditions, demographic conditions and cultural processes. Like Egypt's 20th-century fin-de siècle, much of this ferment was a prelude to the more visible and politically eruptive events of the next decades, when Egypt's popular resistance burst onto the international scene. But its subterranean cast was no less dynamic for that. Key Features A wide ranging and theoretically coherent study of a period that was crucial to the formation of modern Egypt 13 case studies challenge the prevailing view that the 1890s in Egypt was a time of withdrawal and quiescence Engages with questions of political engagement, shifting gender roles, geographical ambiguities, the emergence of new media, community identity formation and changing artistic formations.
Making Women's Histories by
Examines how women's histories are explored and explained around the world Making Women's Histories showcases the transformations that the intellectual and political production of women's history has engendered across time and space. It considers the difference women's and gender history has made to and within national fields of study, and to what extent the wider historiography has integrated this new knowledge. What are the accomplishments of women's and gender history? What are its shortcomings? What is its future? The contributors discuss their discovery of women's histories, the multiple turns the field has taken, and how place affected the course of this scholarship. Noted scholars of women's and gender history, they stand atop such historiographically-defined vantage points as Tsarist Russia, the British Empire in Egypt and India, Qing-dynasty China, and the U.S. roiling through the 1960s. From these and other peaks they gaze out at the world around them, surveying trajectories in the creation of women's histories in recent and distant pasts and envisioning their futures.
Medicine and Morality in Egypt by
In Middle Eastern and Islamic societies, the politics of sexual knowledge is a delicate and often controversial subject. Sherry Sayed Gadelrab focuses on nineteenth and early-twentieth century Egypt, claiming that during this period there was a perceptible shift in the medical discourse surrounding conceptualisations of sex differences and the construction of sexuality. Medical authorities began to promote theories that suggested men's innate 'active' sexuality as opposed to women's more 'passive' characteristics, interpreting the differences in female and male bodies to correspond to this hierarchy. Through examining the interconnection of medical, legal, religious and moral discourses on sexual behaviour, Gadelrab highlights the association between sex, sexuality and the creation and recreation of the concept of gender at this crucial moment in the development of Egyptian society. By analysing the debates at the time surrounding science, medicine, morality, modernity and sexuality, she paints a nuanced picture of the Egyptian understanding and manipulation of the concepts of sex and gender.
Women's Work by
2500 years ago, the women of Athens slaved at home, virtual prisoners of their husbands, expected to provide the cloth and clothing for their family. 4000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, there was a very different picture: respectable women were in business, weaving textiles at home to be sold abroad for gold and silver. Going back even further, 20,000 years ago women began making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibres. Indeed, for over 20,000 years, until the Industrial Revolution, the arts of weaving belonged primarily to women and were the principal vehicle for demonstrating their various roles as mother, provider, worker, entrepreneur and artist.