Women in the limelight: Some recent books on middle eastern women’s history

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 553-573

  Keddie, Nikki R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85010099194     PISSN: 00207438     EISSN: 14716380     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743802003069     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Nikki R. Keddie, “The Study of Muslim Women in the Middle East: Achievements and Remaining Problems,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 6, and my forthcoming sixty-page pamphlet on Middle Eastern women’s history, to be published by the American Historical Association, Washington, D.C.
2. See Deniz Kandiyoti, “Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective,” in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991).
3. Billie Melman, Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718-1918: Sexuality, Religion and Work, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).
4. Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), chap. 12.
5. Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters—Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904 (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1994). See also Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda, ed., Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), esp. Clancy-Smith’s excellent “Islam, Gender, and Identities in the Making of French Algeria, 1830-1962.”
6. See the chapters and bibliographical items by Suad Joseph and Mounira Charrad in Gender and Citizen-ship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Joseph, (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000), and Mounira Charrad, States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
7. Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).
8. Guity Nashat Judith E. Tucker, Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Restoring Women to History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
9. Zahra F. Arat, Reconstructing Images of “The Turkish Woman” (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
10. Sirin Tekeli, ed., Women in Modern Turkish Society (London: Zed Books, 1995).
11. Alan Duben and Cem Behar, Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880–1940 (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
12. Fanny Davis, The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).
13. Carol Delaney, The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Jenny B. White, Money Makes Us Relatives: Women’s Labor in Urban Turkey (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994).
14. Niliifer Gole, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
15. Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
16. Eliz Sanasarian, The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1982).
17. Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution 1906-1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democ-racy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Mangol Bayat-Philipp, “Women and Revolution in Iran, 1905-1911,” in Women in the Muslim World, ed. Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978).
18. Afsaneh Najmabadi, The Story of tbe Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998).
19. “The Banning of the Veil and its Consequences,” H. E. Chehabi, in a forthcoming volume on Reza Shah edited by Stephanie Cronin, which also contains articles on women by Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi and Shirin Mahdavi.
20. Camron Michael Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender, State Policy, and Popular Culture, 1865–1946 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002).
21. Haleh Esfandiari, Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Wood-row Wilson Center Press, 1997).
22. Maryam Poya, Women, Work and Islamism: Ideology and Resistance in Iran (London: Zed Books, 1999).
23. Homa Hoodfar, Volunteer Health Workers in Iran as Social Activists: Can “Governmental Non-govern-mental Organisations” Be Agents of Democratisation? Women Living Under Muslim Laws Occasional Paper no. 10 (n.p., 1998).
24. Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl, ed., In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1994).
25. Haideh Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran: Women’s Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
26. Idem, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis (London: Zed Books, 1999).
27. Haleh Afshar, Islam and Feminisms: An Iranian Case Study (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
28. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law: Iran and Morocco Compared (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993). Idem, Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 1999).
29. Shahla Haeri, Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shii Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993).
30. Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994).
31. Lila Abu-Lughod, ed., Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).
32. Cynthia Nelson, Doria Shafik, Egyptian Feminist: A Woman Apart (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996).
33. Selma Botman, Engendering Citizenship in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
34. Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000)
35. On differences between colonial and non-colonial countries, see Nikki R. Keddie, “Western Rule Versus Western Values,” Diogenes 26: 71–96.
36. Diane Singerman and Homa Hoodfar, ed., Development, Change, and Gender in Cairo: A View from the Household (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996)
37. Annelies Moors, Women, Property and Islam: Palestinian Experiences, 1920–1990 (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1995).
38. Julie M. Peteet, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (New York: Colum-bia University Press, 1992).
39. Ellen L. Fleischmann, The Nation and its “New” Women: Feminism, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1920–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
40. See the items by Julia Clancy-Smith in n. 5. Some of her articles are found in the collections referenced in notes 53, 54, 55, and 60.
41. Charrad, States and Women’s Rights.
42. Marnia Lazreg, The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question (New York: Routledge, 1994).
43. Evelyn Early, Baladi Women of Cairo: Playing with an Egg and a Stone (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rien-ner, 1993); Homa Hoodfar, Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Arlene Elowe Macleod, Accommodating Protest: Working Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Diane Singer-man, Avenues of Participation: Famixnthhsly, Politics and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995); Unni Wikan, Tomorrow, God Willing: Self-Made Destinies in Cairo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); and Sherifa Zuhur, Revealing Reveiling: Islamist Gender Ideology in Contemporary Egypt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
44. Nadje al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
45. Laurie A. Brand, Women, the State, and Political Liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African Experiences (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
46. Valentine M. Moghadam, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993).
47. Martha Mundy, Domestic Government: Kinship, Community and Polity in North Yemen (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995).
48. Sondra Hale, Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism, and the State (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997).
49. Jenny B. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).
50. Deniz Kandiyoti, ed., Women, Islam and the State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).
51. valentine M. Moghadam, ed., Identity Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspective (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994).
52. Herbert L. Bodman and Nayereh Tohidi, ed., Women in Muslim Societies: Diversity Within Unity (Boul-der, Colo.: Lynne Reiner, 1998).
53. Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl, ed., Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation: Implementing the Beijing Platform (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
54. Margaret L. Meriwether and Judith E. Tucker, ed., A Social History of Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999). Amira El Azhary Sonbol, ed., Women, the Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic History (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996).
55. Keddie and Baron, Women in Middle Eastern History.
56. Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women.
57. Fatma Miige Go£ek and Shiva Balaghi, ed., Reconstructing Gender in tbe Middle East: Tradition, Identity, and Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
58. Judith E. Tucker, ed., Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers (Bloomington: University of Indi-ana Press, 1993); Tekeli Women in Modern Turkish Society.
59. Mai Yamani, ed., Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives (New York: New York Univer-sity Press, 1996); Suha Sabbagh, ed., Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Olive Branch Press, 1996).
60. Rudi Matthee and Beth Baron, ed., Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 2000).
61. Beck and Keddie, Women in the Muslim World; Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dy-namics in a Modern Muslim Society, rev. ed. (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1987); Judith E. Tucker, Women in Nineteenth Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); and several works by Elizabeth Warnock Femea, including Guests of the Sheik (New York: Doubleday, 1965), and, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, ed., Women and the Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985).
62. Existing books and articles, including Women in Muslim Family Law, ed. John L. Esposito with Natana J. DeLong-Bas, 2nd ed. (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2001), give only partial coverage of this topic, which should be researched for a needed comparative work. A still largely valid comparative summary of women’s legal situation and position in the workforce until 1987, which could be updated, is found in Nadia Hijab, Womanpower: The Arab Debate on Women at Work (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1988).
63. Several well-known general books on Islamic or Middle Eastern history and anthropology provide background and context for such questions. An important and under-utilized work, which has an original separate chapter on women and discusses differences between Turkish and Arab kinship patterns, is Charles Lindholm, The Islamic Middle East: An Historical Anthropology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Deniz Kandi-yoti wrote to me in January 2002 that some Turkic groups’ kinship and marital patterns differ from Arab patterns in ways noted by Lindholm, but her research with many Turkic groups shows that today they have a variety of kinship systems and marital preferences.