Further Reading: Feminism in the MENA/Kurdistan

December 27, 2019Leave a comment

As we near the start of the semester, A Reflection of Kurdish Women on Revolutionary Feminism(s) and Solidarity in the MENA | Kurdistan, by Elif Genc, Gülay Kilicaslan, and Berivan Kutlay Sarikaya, re/draws our attention to the ways that feminism is diverse, and within that diversity is room for further conversations and (at times) negotiation.

The value of this article is its focus on the spaces for discussion and the possibilities for different feminisms to coexist, and on a deeper level, which feminism/s, when, and how they shift with time.

Sonja Hamad, ‘Kurdish Spring’, in *Jin – Jiyan – Azadi: Women, Life, Freedom*.

Written after the 2019 annual MESA (Middle East Studies Association) Meeting in New Orleans, where the authors had attended the meeting, ‘Feminist Conversation on Current Uprisings in the Middle East’, the piece highlights the significance of space, as well as marginalization, silencing, and the ways that violence emerges between these:

Kurds, particularly Kurdish women, have been marginalized and silenced in various ways and layers due to their particular position: they are subjected to intersecting forms of violence as colonized subjects under four nation-states in the MENA. These colonial subjectivities have permeated the consciousness and social relations of the feminist collectives in the MENA in their everyday politics.
As Kurdish women activist-academics, we consider that these colonial subjectivities must be problematized and decolonized in feminist conversations that see themselves as progressive. The milieu for this prefigurative feminist politics can only be fostered if the hierarchical power relations, embodied in these colonial subjectivities, are acknowledged and unpacked in feminist praxis in the MENA.
Elif Genc, Gülay Kilicaslan, Berivan Kutlay Sarikaya, 2019. ‘A Reflection of Kurdish Women on Revolutionary Feminism(s) and Solidarity in the MENA | Kurdistan’, Kohl, 5: 3.

Looking to our conversations this semester, the article is an important piece to reflect on in weeks 1, 2, and 4, and should be read alongside its fellow articles on feminist revolutions in this edition of Kohl.

Podcast Tip: Gender, Governance, and Islam

July 18, 2019Leave a comment

One for Week 8, an excellent podcast discussion with Professor Nadje Al-Ali, (Watson Institute, Brown University), and a regular on our reading list:

In the podcast, Professor Al-Ali talks about her new book, co-edited with Deniz Kandiyoti and Kathryn Spellman Poots, Gender, Islam & Governance (2019), as well as the deeper issues affecting gender and area studies:

If you want to understand the level of authoritarianism or the level of democracy, the politics of gender is not a side issue. It’s central to it. Often, mainstream political scientists, international relations scholars, or even area studies scholars, they think about women and gender issues as a side issue to the big issues of political transition, democracy, authoritarianism.
You don’t need to be an academic to see when you look at what’s been unfolding, especially since 2011 in terms of the various protest movements in the region, that when it comes to women, men, sexuality, this has been actually a central component of challenging previous regimes, but also has been a central component of regimes trying to control their populations. How does a regime try to crack down on a protest movement? By controlling women’s mobility. By sexual harassing women and telling them, ‘your place is not on the street’.
[‘Gender, Governance, and Islam’ with Nadje Al-Ali’, interview by Sarah Baldwin.]

The volume includes a collection of chapters that are relevant to not only Week 8, but Weeks 4, 7, and 9 (and more), including research by Islah Jad, (‘Palestine: Gender in an Imagined Fragmented Sovereignty’), Al-Ali (‘Iraq: Gendering Violence, Sectarianisms and Authoritarianism’), and Afiya Shehrbano Zia (‘Defiance not Subservience: New Directions in the Pakistani Women’s Movement’), among others.

Reading: Lebanon’s militarized masculinity, by Joey Ayoub

July 10, 2019Leave a comment

One for Week 5 (or Week 2), Joey Ayoub’s Lebanon’s militarized masculinity provides a comprehensive and insightful reflection on masculinities, gender, and sexuality in Lebanon.

Through the piece, Ayoub considers the ways that masculinity has unfolded since the Lebanese Civil War, as well as the questions that surround the study of Lebanese masculinity, including:

Does ‘Lebanese’ include only those lucky enough to get the difficult-to-obtain citizenship, itself often a sectarian calculation? Do studies exclude, for example, Syrian and Palestinian refugee men who have been in Lebanon for several years? What about those who are half-Lebanese, half-Palestinian, or those who have a non-Lebanese father and a Lebanese mother, and therefore don’t have the citizenship? Does the topic pre-suppose a cis and heterosexual subject?
[Source]

Working as both a primer for the nuances of post-war society and a profound consideration of race, LGBTQ+ rights, socio-economic issues, gender equality, and the Kafala (sponsorship) system, the article also offers paths to research the topic further, via the works of Fatima Sbaity Kassem, Najib Hourani, and Sune Haugbolle.

For more pieces by Ayoub, follow his blog, Hummus for Thought, here.

CfP: Women and Gender Studies in the Middle East

July 9, 2019Leave a comment

This time a call for papers, for submission towards the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) inaugural conference, Women and Gender Studies in the Middle East, which will be held in Beirut in March 2021.

The thematic focus is broad, and submissions are welcomed from fields such as politics, economics, history, sexualities, culture, arts, and digital humanities, among others.

The deadline for abstracts is October 30, 2019, and submissions must be 250 words, follow the template outlined in the call, and include a reflection on “why you believe this is a pressing topic”.

For more on AMEWS, and their publication, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, visit their latest issue, Generations, here.

Event of Note: Queer Feminisms Writing Workshop

July 3, 2019Leave a comment

Kohl, a feminist journal with a focus on gender and sexuality in West Asia, South West Asia, and North Africa, has opened its call for applications towards its 2019 Queer Feminisms Writing Workshop.

The workshop will be held over five days between November 29 and December 3 in Lebanon, and will work towards their June 2020 issue.

During the workshop, participants will reflect on how queer feminisms have been conceptualised and experienced in Arabic-speaking societies, both in and beyond the region. Framing the discourse will be questions such as,

What are queer feminisms? How do we theorize them away from western/white articulations? How have queer politics that are intersectional taken root and manifested in our movements’ praxis? What are the queer feminist fault lines we encounter? What political projects are we envisioning and want to see materialize, and what mechanisms do we put in place for ourselves and each other?
[source]

The deadline for applications is August 11; for more details on the submission and eligibility, visit their call, here.

SGV Critical Approaches

Tag: MENA