From the Back Cover
Women in the Middle East and North Africa is one of four volumes in the Restoring Women to History series. The original teaching packets on which the series is based, published in 1988 by the Organization of American Historians, played a key role in the revision of the history curriculum and the incorporation of women into the study of world history. The explosion of scholarship on women over the past decade has prompted a major re-examination and expansion of the original materials into four separate volumes. Dealing with women in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East, these volumes consider what questions are in currency at this stage in the field of women's history, what type of evidence is available, and what gaps exist within the scholarship. Each volume features an introduction by an expert in the history of the area. The general introduction by Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel sets out the general themes and issues that emerge from the series and addresses points of comparison and difference between the regions. The aim of Restoring Women to History is to demonstrate the value of comparative history while generating new questions and shedding new light on current scholarship in the non-Western world.
In this volume, Guity Nashat traces the evolution of the role of women in Middle Eastern societies from ancient times through the seventeenth century. She employs a rational choice theoretical framework, examining the interplay between local practices and early Islamic beliefs and institutions. Nashat follows the expansion of Islam throughout the area and further examines the subsequent development of the foundations of Islamic law and practice with regard to women. Judith E Tucker surveys women and gender issues in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Middle East, with particular focus on economic activity, assess to political power, and contributions to cultural life. Her essay also addresses the role that Islam and indigenous custom are thought to play in shaping women's lives.
About the Author
Guity Nashat is professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of
Illinois at Chicago. She has published The Beginnings of Modern Reform in
Iran and edited Women and Revolution in Iran.
Judith E. Tucker is professor of history at Georgetown University. She
authored Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt and In the House of the Law:
Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine and co-edited Arab
Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers.
