The I.B. Tauris Handbook to Gendering the Histories of the Arab World - (I B Tauris Handbooks) by Hoda Elsadda & Seteney Shami (Hardcover)

About the Book

Provides a new cultural history of the Arab world by using gender as a theoretical lens

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

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

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

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.

About the Author

Hoda Elsadda is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cairo University, Egypt. She previously held a Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University, UK and was Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in the UK. She is Co-founder of the Women and Memory Forum in Egypt (www.wmf.org.eg) and was Carnegie Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University in 2014-15. She is author of Gender, Nation and the Arabic Novel: Egypt: 1892-2008 (2012); and co-editor of Oral History in Times of Change: Gender, Documentation and the Making of Archives (2018).

Seteney Shami is founding Director-General of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Lebanon. She has been Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, Georgetown University, University of Chicago and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences. She has also been a program director at the Population Council regional office in Cairo and at the Social Science Research Council in New York. Her most recent book is Seeing the World: How U.S. Universities Make Knowledge in a Global Era (2018).