Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9767912
Kylie Broderick
LebaneseWomen at the Crossroads is an incisive intervention into a series of questions that Nelia Hyndman-Rizk calls the “women’s rights puzzle” in Lebanon (114):Why is women’s political representation so low inLebanon?Why iswomen’s participation in the labor force relatively thin, even though they are highly educated in aggregate? Why can Lebanese women not pass Lebanese citizenship on to their children? In facing these questions, Hyndman-Rizk asks whether introducing a secular nationality and civic marriage law would solve themany legal, political, social, and economic contradictions that women face in Lebanon. Although it would not be a panacea, it would nevertheless guarantee that “citizenship status will be absolute, irrespective of sect or gender, rather than relational based upon sect and gender” (114). Thefirst part of the book, “Formations” (introd.–chap. 3), is a broad overview (based on original research and a wide range of secondary sources) of the ways that Lebanese people, specifically Lebanese women, have been constructed under differing legal regimes between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries. It examines “the formation of Lebanon as a congressional democracy and explores the plural system of personal status law in Lebanon, wherein women experience differential and relational rights under both religious and civil law” (113). The introduction situates the ongoing challengeswomen face in Lebanon within the arc of the Arab uprisings between late 2010 and 2013. Some accounts assert that thenewer uprisings that began again in the late 2010s, including those in Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, Palestine, and Lebanon (particularly its October 2019 uprising), are volutions of the still-ongoing uprisings, which contain similar discontents, motivations, and strategies. Likewise, Hyndman-Rizk asserts that the women’s movement in Lebanon is currently in a fourth phase that “is an extension of previous waves of activism in theMENA region” (4–5). She acknowledges that women’s issues in Lebanon are rooted
{"title":"Lebanese Women at the Crossroads: Caught between Sect and Nation by Nelia Hyndman-Rizk (review)","authors":"Kylie Broderick","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9767912","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9767912","url":null,"abstract":"LebaneseWomen at the Crossroads is an incisive intervention into a series of questions that Nelia Hyndman-Rizk calls the “women’s rights puzzle” in Lebanon (114):Why is women’s political representation so low inLebanon?Why iswomen’s participation in the labor force relatively thin, even though they are highly educated in aggregate? Why can Lebanese women not pass Lebanese citizenship on to their children? In facing these questions, Hyndman-Rizk asks whether introducing a secular nationality and civic marriage law would solve themany legal, political, social, and economic contradictions that women face in Lebanon. Although it would not be a panacea, it would nevertheless guarantee that “citizenship status will be absolute, irrespective of sect or gender, rather than relational based upon sect and gender” (114). Thefirst part of the book, “Formations” (introd.–chap. 3), is a broad overview (based on original research and a wide range of secondary sources) of the ways that Lebanese people, specifically Lebanese women, have been constructed under differing legal regimes between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries. It examines “the formation of Lebanon as a congressional democracy and explores the plural system of personal status law in Lebanon, wherein women experience differential and relational rights under both religious and civil law” (113). The introduction situates the ongoing challengeswomen face in Lebanon within the arc of the Arab uprisings between late 2010 and 2013. Some accounts assert that thenewer uprisings that began again in the late 2010s, including those in Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, Palestine, and Lebanon (particularly its October 2019 uprising), are volutions of the still-ongoing uprisings, which contain similar discontents, motivations, and strategies. Likewise, Hyndman-Rizk asserts that the women’s movement in Lebanon is currently in a fourth phase that “is an extension of previous waves of activism in theMENA region” (4–5). She acknowledges that women’s issues in Lebanon are rooted","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43946704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9767884
B. Mehta
abstract:This essay examines the poetry of the Francophone author Maram al-Masri, a diasporic feminist poet from Syria who has lived in exile in Paris since 1992. Elle va nue la liberté is an indictment of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and an ode to the creative resilience of ordinary people during the Syrian revolution (2011). This essay demonstrates how al-Masri's poetry grafts landscapes of pain and resistance in a poetics of the gut that bears witness to horror, trauma, and resistance. It focuses on the trope of blood writing, documentary poetry or poésie-vérité, and the poet's sense of exile in France.
{"title":"The Painful Road to Freedom in Maram al-Masri's Elle Va Nue la Liberté (Freedom Walks Naked)","authors":"B. Mehta","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9767884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9767884","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This essay examines the poetry of the Francophone author Maram al-Masri, a diasporic feminist poet from Syria who has lived in exile in Paris since 1992. Elle va nue la liberté is an indictment of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and an ode to the creative resilience of ordinary people during the Syrian revolution (2011). This essay demonstrates how al-Masri's poetry grafts landscapes of pain and resistance in a poetics of the gut that bears witness to horror, trauma, and resistance. It focuses on the trope of blood writing, documentary poetry or poésie-vérité, and the poet's sense of exile in France.","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47706224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9767940
Sophia Goodfriend
Women’s Political Activism in Palestine is a timely intervention. In 2021 a new generation of Palestinian activists came into the global spotlight. Young influencers turned away from more established political avenues, using social media to broadcast the damaging effects of Israel’smilitary rule on everyday life in Palestine. Their narratives drew global attention to the injustices of Israel’s occupation, framing the Palestinian struggle alongside growing movements against racism and dispossession worldwide. As 2021 demonstrated, and as Sophie Richter-Devroe writes in her introduction, “the need to refocus and rethink what ‘doing politics’ really means in Palestine seems even more urgent today” (2). Her analysis of Palestinian women’s activism since the second intifada provides valuable historical and theoretical context to the shifting landscape of grassroots struggle across Palestine. Richter-Devroe joins many scholars who have retheorized Palestinian politics since the failure of the Oslo Accords, the intensification of Israel’s military rule, and the disintegration of Palestiniannational leadership (Hammami2006;Hasso2005;Kanaaneh2009; Peteet 2018; Shalhoub-Kevorkia 2015).By focusingonPalestinianwomen in theWestBank and East Jerusalem, Richter-Devroe clarifies how women continue the struggle for Palestinian liberation in ways that exceed the frameworks of secular nationalism or Islamism. Drawing on postcolonial and feminist critiques (Abu-Lughod 2000; Fraser 1992) of classic political theory (Habermas 1984, 1989), Richter-Devroe demonstrates howwomen engage in an “informal politics” enacted in quotidian contexts and through improvised, often private, practices (2): from anti-wall protests or commuting past checkpoints to sharing food with neighbors as settlers encroach on one’s land. In this way, Richter-Devroe’s method is ethnographic. Her data, based on fieldwork in theWest Bank and East Jerusalem between 2007and2009,derive fromscores of interviews, focusgroups, andparticipantobservations of political events with women from diverse crosscuts of Palestinian society.
{"title":"Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Survival","authors":"Sophia Goodfriend","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9767940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9767940","url":null,"abstract":"Women’s Political Activism in Palestine is a timely intervention. In 2021 a new generation of Palestinian activists came into the global spotlight. Young influencers turned away from more established political avenues, using social media to broadcast the damaging effects of Israel’smilitary rule on everyday life in Palestine. Their narratives drew global attention to the injustices of Israel’s occupation, framing the Palestinian struggle alongside growing movements against racism and dispossession worldwide. As 2021 demonstrated, and as Sophie Richter-Devroe writes in her introduction, “the need to refocus and rethink what ‘doing politics’ really means in Palestine seems even more urgent today” (2). Her analysis of Palestinian women’s activism since the second intifada provides valuable historical and theoretical context to the shifting landscape of grassroots struggle across Palestine. Richter-Devroe joins many scholars who have retheorized Palestinian politics since the failure of the Oslo Accords, the intensification of Israel’s military rule, and the disintegration of Palestiniannational leadership (Hammami2006;Hasso2005;Kanaaneh2009; Peteet 2018; Shalhoub-Kevorkia 2015).By focusingonPalestinianwomen in theWestBank and East Jerusalem, Richter-Devroe clarifies how women continue the struggle for Palestinian liberation in ways that exceed the frameworks of secular nationalism or Islamism. Drawing on postcolonial and feminist critiques (Abu-Lughod 2000; Fraser 1992) of classic political theory (Habermas 1984, 1989), Richter-Devroe demonstrates howwomen engage in an “informal politics” enacted in quotidian contexts and through improvised, often private, practices (2): from anti-wall protests or commuting past checkpoints to sharing food with neighbors as settlers encroach on one’s land. In this way, Richter-Devroe’s method is ethnographic. Her data, based on fieldwork in theWest Bank and East Jerusalem between 2007and2009,derive fromscores of interviews, focusgroups, andparticipantobservations of political events with women from diverse crosscuts of Palestinian society.","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47119020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9767982
A. Torbati
T he vast majority of the Iranian diasporic population in Europe is concentrated in the United Kingdom, with an estimate of seventy thousand Iranian fi rst-generation migrants (CT0723_2011 Census n.d.). 1 Learning a new culture but not losing one ’ s own has always been a challenge among Iranians. This article offers a comparative analysis of two studies examining Iranian fi rst-generation migrants ’ understandings of power, belonging, and respectability in the diaspora. It provides important insights into how Iranian migrants in the United Kingdom differently conceptualize these notions at the intersection of class, gender, and race. The fi rst study, by Mastoureh Fathi (2017), explores the intersectional experiences of Iranian migrant women living in the United Kingdom. The second study, conducted in my PhD dissertation, examines Iranian men ’ s different perceptions of sexual violence, also in the United Kingdom. The fi rst study focuses on how gendered identities are performed within different classes. The second study argues that Iranian men perceive Iranian masculinity as superior to English masculinity, sexualizing notions of respectability and relating it to modesty.
{"title":"Power, Belonging, and Respectability","authors":"A. Torbati","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9767982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9767982","url":null,"abstract":"T he vast majority of the Iranian diasporic population in Europe is concentrated in the United Kingdom, with an estimate of seventy thousand Iranian fi rst-generation migrants (CT0723_2011 Census n.d.). 1 Learning a new culture but not losing one ’ s own has always been a challenge among Iranians. This article offers a comparative analysis of two studies examining Iranian fi rst-generation migrants ’ understandings of power, belonging, and respectability in the diaspora. It provides important insights into how Iranian migrants in the United Kingdom differently conceptualize these notions at the intersection of class, gender, and race. The fi rst study, by Mastoureh Fathi (2017), explores the intersectional experiences of Iranian migrant women living in the United Kingdom. The second study, conducted in my PhD dissertation, examines Iranian men ’ s different perceptions of sexual violence, also in the United Kingdom. The fi rst study focuses on how gendered identities are performed within different classes. The second study argues that Iranian men perceive Iranian masculinity as superior to English masculinity, sexualizing notions of respectability and relating it to modesty.","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49073026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9494206
E. Avramopoulou
{"title":"The Everyday Makings of Heteronormativity: Cross-Cultural Explorations of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality ed. by Sertaç Sehlikoglu and Frank G. Karioris (review)","authors":"E. Avramopoulou","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9494206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9494206","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49393137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9494430
Ranjana Khanna
{"title":"A Feminist Ethos of Point Zero","authors":"Ranjana Khanna","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9494430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9494430","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47368932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9494192
M. Agosti
{"title":"Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation","authors":"M. Agosti","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9494192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9494192","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41677268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9494290
Zimu Niu
{"title":"Remembering Nawal El Saadawi","authors":"Zimu Niu","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9494290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9494290","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43578981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9494416
Bruce B. Lawrence
{"title":"Nawal and Sherif Tribute","authors":"Bruce B. Lawrence","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9494416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9494416","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48271736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/15525864-9494220
Iris Gilad
{"title":"Under the Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from the Middle East and North Africa Today","authors":"Iris Gilad","doi":"10.1215/15525864-9494220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-9494220","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45155,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Middle East Womens Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44166445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}