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.
Edited by:
Hoda Elsadda,
Seteney Shami
Imprint: I.B. Tauris
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 244mm,
Width: 169mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780755648252
ISBN 10: 0755648250
Series: I B Tauris Handbooks
Pages: 496
Publication Date: 22 January 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Introduction: Gendering the Histories of the Arab World: Issues and Theoretical Perspectives, Hoda Elsadda, University of Cairo, Egypt and Seteney Shami, the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Lebanon Part One: Histories of Practices Introduction to Part One: Hoda Elsadda and Seteney Shami 1- Gendering the Islamic Interpretive Tradition, Hadia Mubarak, Guilford College, US 2- The Cultural History of Islamic Law, Judith Tucker, Professor of History at Georgetown University, US 3- Gendering Protest Movements, Leyla Dakhli, French Center for National Research (CNRS), France 4- Gendering Archival Practices. TBC. 5- Gendering Histories of Consumption. TBC. Part Two: Histories of Representations Introduction to Part Two: Hoda Elsadda and Seteney Shami 1- Feminist Transcultural Resistance through Art in the Maghreb and its Diaspora, Siobhan Shilton, University of Bristol, UK 2- A History of Arab Popular Culture from a Gender Lens, Mounira Soliman, Cairo University, Egypt 3- Gendering the History of the Egyptian Left, Hanan Hammad, Texas Christian University, US 4- Gendering the History of Arab Cinema. May Telmissany. Associate Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Ottowa. 5- Gendering the Arab Literary Tradition. TBC. 6- Gendering Histories of State Formation. TBC. Part Three: Narrative Sites of Cultural Memory Introduction to Part Three: Hoda Elsadda and Seteney Shami 1- Arab Women Autobiographical Interventions. Hala Kamal, Cairo University, Egypt 2- Resisting the Embedded “gendered logic”: Nakba Generation Women Reaffirm, Reclaim, Reframe and Rename that One Decision They Made, Laura Khoury, Birzeit University, Palestine 3- The Life Stories of Um Badriya and Safiya: A Reflection on Cultural Memory and Historical processes, Malak Rouchdy, independent scholar 4- Gendered Memory and Memorialization: Online Sites of Remembrance after the Arab Revolutions, Loubna Skalli, University of California Washington, US 5- Gender, Memory and Trauma. TBC Part Four: Histories of Material Culture Introduction to Part Four: Hoda Elsadda and Seteney Shami 1- Gold Jewelry: Transformations in Signifying Gender and Class. Annelies Moors, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2- A Cultural History of Coffee Houses from a Gender Lens. Amina El Bendary, American University in Cairo, Egypt 3- Museums/Exhibitions. TBC 4- History of Food. TBC 5- National Monuments. TBC Part Five: Histories of the Body Introduction to Part Five: Hoda Elsadda and Seteney Shami 1- Women Doctors and Narratives of Resistance, Sherine Hamdy, University of California Irvine, US, and Soha Bayoumi, Harvard University, US 2- Urban Masculinities: Cities and the Making of Men in the Arab world. Farha Ghannam, Swarthmore College, US 3- Gendering histories of public health in the Arab world. Livia Wick, American University of Beirut, Lebanon 4- Performance/art/photography of wars . TBC 5- Histories of Arab Sexualities. TBC.
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).
Reviews for The I.B. Tauris Handbook to Gendering the Cultural Histories of the Modern Arab World
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 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 * 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 *
