Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender [Paperback]

Nikki R. Keddie (Editor), Professor Beth Baron (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 28, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0300056974 | ISBN-13: 978-0300056976

This collection of essays constitutes a scholarly volume on the history of Middle Eastern women. Unlike other works which take a sociological or religious standpoint, its focus is emphatically historical - covering the period from earliest Islam to the present day. Sources for the Middle East are scanter than those for the West and are heavily male-oriented, containing little overt material on women. Yet this volume demonstrates that much can be gleaned from the dominant material on men, and the essays make use of a wide range of sources, including histories, geographies, biographical dictionaries, law books, narrative texts, and poetry. Use is also made of imaginative works like the Thousand and One Nights, and of the Traditions (hadith) of the Prophet. Inferences are drawn too from music, art, architecture, and material culture. The volume examines modern writings by Middle Eastern women, and material in Western writings and archives of the modern period. Later essays show how these historical investigations may be aided by the methods of sociology and anthropology, giving strong evidence of how complex and multifaceted is the position of Middle Eastem women, past and present, how diverse are the scholarly views of them, and how one might shift the boundaries that constrain them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Combining scholarship and theory, these essays are loosely organized to concentrate on the early Islamic centuries, the Mamluk period (1250-1517) and the modern age (essentially the 18th century through the 1980s). The authors generally focus on the subject of ``gender boundaries'' in order to demonstrate the changing position of women in Middle Eastern society. Because the region is culturally diverse and the span of time considered is vast, the collection remains miscellaneous, providing detailed studies of endowment deeds in late medieval Egypt and textile manufacturing in the Bursa factories during the 19th century but leaving enormous gaps. Much of the writing is awkward and overburdened with jargon. One bright spot is Paula Sanders's ``Gendering the Ungendered Body: Hermaphrodites in Medieval Islamic Law,'' a marvelous study of medieval Muslim jurists' struggle to incorporate the hermaphrodite in a world where the boundaries between male and female were strictly delineated. Keddie is the author of Roots of Revolution ; Baron teaches history at New York City College.

Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"ÝAn exemplary case of in-depth historical survey. . . . Women's studies in general and Middle Eastern studies in particular are much enriched by Ýthis work, which should be included in the readings of all who wish to gain a sound understanding of Muslim women and politics in the Middle East." -- Haleh Afshar "Third World Quarterly"

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (July 28, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300056974
• ISBN-13: 978-0300056976
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #808,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good teaching tool for Middle Eastern History, January 30, 2012

By 

Professorlilith - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (Paperback)

I am a history professor at a small private college. I assign this book when I teach my survey history of the Middle East. With respect to the reviewer from _Publishers Weekly_, I have found that by the third or fourth week of class my students can read most of the articles in it without too much difficulty. I don't find there to be more jargon in the text than is necessary to discuss early Islamic institutions in English. There are no real English equivalents for waqf, ulama, and isnad, for example, and although these terms appear in the articles, they are also terms I teach my students early on in the course.

I use this book in class because it accomplishes two things that no other publication currently does. In addition to providing materials to use for the entire span of Islamic middle eastern history, it provides insight into women's history and social history. The fact that it is a series of articles is also helpful, because it gives my students an easy way to examine a variety of quite different research methods. I particularly like the three different articles on the Mamluk era. These allow me to have students consider the variety of possible scholarly research perspectives on a relatively narrow subject.