{"title":"Gender Culture And Politics In The Middle East","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the complex interplay of gender, culture, and politics in the Middle East. This collection offers insightful perspectives on identity, social change, and the forces shaping the region today. Start exploring now.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"orphans-and-destitute-children-in-the-late-ottoman-empire-book-nazan-maksudyan-9780815633181","title":"Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire","description":"History books often weave tales of rising and falling empires, royal dynasties, and wars among powerful nations. Here, Maksudyan succeeds in making those who are farthest removed from power the lead actors in this history. Focusing on orphans and destitute youth of the late Ottoman Empire, the author gives voice to those children who have long been neglected. Their experiences and perspectives shed new light on many significant developments of the late Ottoman period, providing an alternative narrative that recognizes children as historical agents.  Maksudyan takes the reader from the intimate world of infant foundlings to the larger international context of missionary orphanages, all while focusing on Ottoman modernization, urbanization, citizenship, and the maintenance of order and security. Drawing upon archival records, she explores the ways in which the treatment of orphans intersected with welfare, labor, and state building in the Empire. Throughout the book, she does not lose sight of her lead actors, and the influence of the children is always present if we simply listen and notice carefully as Maksudyan so convincingly argues.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49551978135825,"sku":"GOR011483892","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49731088023825,"sku":"NGR9780815633181","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815633181.jpg?v=1761390155"},{"product_id":"intersections-book-lisa-suhair-majaj-9780815629764","title":"Intersections","description":"This collection brings together essays by authorities in the field on nine contemporary Arab women novelists from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. The works focus on texts available in English translations and explore topics such as the relationship of the authors' texts to societal change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49557964587281,"sku":"GOR013443490","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49754976420113,"sku":"NGR9780815629764","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008508887313,"sku":"NIN9780815629764","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815629761.jpg?v=1767349933"},{"product_id":"living-palestine-book-lisa-taraki-9780815631347","title":"Living Palestine","description":"Takes an insightful look at how entire households, families, and individuals cope, negotiate their lives, and plan to achieve goals in Occupied Palestine. This book posits that household dynamics cannot be fully grasped unless linked to the traumas of the past and worries of the present.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49592634016017,"sku":"GOR007753105","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815631340.jpg?v=1767351344"},{"product_id":"iranian-women-and-gender-in-the-iran-iraq-war-book-mateo-mohammad-farzaneh-9780815637103","title":"Iranian Women and Gender in the Iran-Iraq War","description":"Eighteen months after Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, hundreds of thousands of the country's women participated in the Iran-Iraq War (1980 - 88) in a variety of capacities. Iran was divided into women of conservative religious backgrounds who supported the revolution and accepted some of the theocratic regime's depictions of gender roles, and liberal women more active in civil society before the revolution who challenged the state's male-dominated gender bias. However, both groups were integral to the war effort, serving as journalists, paramedics, combatants, intelligence officers, medical instructors, and propagandists. Behind the frontlines, women were drivers, surgeons, fundraisers, and community organizers. The war provided women of all social classes the opportunity to assert their role in society, and in doing so, they refused to be marginalized.  Despite their significant contributions, women are largely absent from studies on the war. Drawing upon primary sources such as memoirs, wills, interviews, print media coverage, and oral histories, Farzaneh chronicles in copious detail women's participation on the battlefield, in the household, and everywhere in between.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49604317184273,"sku":"GOR013573826","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815637101.jpg?v=1761391035"},{"product_id":"intimate-selving-in-arab-families-book-suad-joseph-9780815628170","title":"Intimate Selving in Arab Families","description":"This collection of articles written by feminist scholars focuses on intimate Arab familial relationships. The authors identify key family relationships - mother-son, brother-sister, co-wives, father-daughter - to explore women's contribution to shaping and defining themselves in relation to others.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49729876361489,"sku":"NGR9780815628170","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740287103249,"sku":"NIN9780815628170","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081562817X.jpg?v=1767348149"},{"product_id":"palestinian-women-and-muslim-family-law-in-the-mandate-period-book-elizabeth-brownson-9780815636465","title":"Palestinian Women and Muslim Family Law in the Mandate Period","description":"In this volume, Brownson sheds new light on Palestinian Muslim women's agency in shari‘a courts from the British Mandate period to the present. Her extensive archival research on wife-initiated maintenance claims, divorce, and child custody cases deepens our understanding of women's position in the courts, demonstrating that Muslim women were and are active participants in their legal affairs. Using court registers and interviews, Brownson uncovers a variety of ways women have manipulated the system to their benefit despite its patriarchal bias. She also finds that few reforms were implemented during the Mandate period. The British were uninterested in improving colonized women's legal status and sought to avoid further antagonizing Palestinians. At the same time, Palestinians wished to uphold the one indigenous institution they still controlled while both British rule and Zionism threatened their nationalist aspirations. Although Palestinian women have had few alternatives to using this male privileged system to redress grievances with their husbands and in-laws, they continue to resist its injustices every day. Brownson finds that women's understanding of family law fundamentals has enabled some to deftly navigate the system; however, a unified, reformed law reflecting society's current needs is required so women can have full access to their rights.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49732353753361,"sku":"NGR9780815636465","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815636466.jpg?v=1761387382"},{"product_id":"working-out-desire-book-serta-sehlikoglu-9780815636953","title":"Working Out Desire","description":"Examines spor meraki as an object of desire shared by a broad and diverse group of Istanbulite women. Sehlikoglu follows the latest anthropological scholarship that defines desire beyond the moment it is felt, experienced, or even yearned for, and as something that is formed through a series of social and historical makings.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734104809745,"sku":"NGR9780815636953","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363250606353,"sku":"CIN0815636954G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815636954.jpg?v=1761386175"},{"product_id":"best-of-hard-times-book-gustavo-barbosa-9780815637370","title":"The Best of Hard Times","description":"The Best of Hard Times explores the gendered identities of two generations of men in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. Gustavo Barbosa compares the fida'iyyin, the men who served as freedom fighters to reconquer Palestine in the 1970s, to the shabab, their sons who lead seemingly mundane lives with limited access to power. While the fida'iyyinn displayed their masculinity through active resistance and fighting to return to their homeland, the shabab have a more nuanced relationship to Palestine and articulate their gender belonging in alternative ways.  Through vivid ethnographic stories, Barbosa critically engages with certain trends in feminism, calling attention to their limits and considering nimble views on gender. Instead of presenting the shabab as emasculated or experiencing a crisis of masculinity, the book shows the pliability of masculinity in time and space and argues that \"\"gender\"\" has limited purchase to capture the experiences of today's youth from Shatila. Based on two years of fieldwork, The Best of Hard Times answers the burgeoning demand for anthropological literature on Arab masculinities and portrays refugees as inventive actors rather than agentless victims of circumstances beyond their control. The Best of Hard Times is a tour de force combining highbrow theory with gripping ethnography, challenging many of the stereotypes on gender, power, statehood, and the role of Islam in the Middle East.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49739683234065,"sku":"NGR9780815637370","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815637373.jpg?v=1761389301"},{"product_id":"quest-for-love-in-central-morocco-book-laura-menin-9780815638308","title":"Quest for Love in Central Morocco","description":"Moving between public and clandestine interactions and within online environments, Quest for Love in Central Morocco explores the creative ways young women navigate desire and morality.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753942425873,"sku":"NGR9780815638308","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51758444314897,"sku":"CIN0815638302VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815638302.jpg?v=1761387803"},{"product_id":"istanbul-appearances-book-claudia-liebelt-9780815611561","title":"Istanbul Appearances","description":"In the past two decades, the consumption of beauty services and cosmetic surgery in Turkey has developed from an elite phenomenon to an increasingly common practice, especially among younger and middle-aged women. Turkey now ranks among the top countries worldwide with the highest number of cosmetic procedures, and with its cultural and economic capital, Istanbul has become a regional center for the beauty and fashion industries. Istanbul Appearances shows the profound effects of this growing market on urban residents’ body images, gendered norms, and practices. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork carried out in beauty salons and clinics in different parts of the city, Liebelt explores how standards of femininity and female desire have shifted since the consolidation of power and authoritarian rule of the conservative, pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party.  Arguing that the politics of beauty are intricately bound up with the politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality, Liebelt shows that female bodies have become a major site for the negotiation of citizenship. It is in the numerous beauty salons and clinics that the heteronormative ideals and images of gendered bodies become real, embodied in a complex array of emotional desires of who and what is considered not only beautiful but also morally proper.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49780997194001,"sku":"CIN0815611560G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815611560.jpg?v=1761387550"},{"product_id":"dance-of-the-rose-and-the-nightingale-book-nesta-ramazani-9780815607274","title":"Dance of the Rose and the Nightingale","description":"This work is an autobiography of a young girl growing up in Iran. The daughter of an English Christian mother and an Iranian Zoroastrian father, Nesta Ramazani sketches her personal life story against the backdrop of a society marked by the fusion of Iranian, Islamic, and Western cultures.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49801452519697,"sku":"CIN081560727XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50351930769681,"sku":"GOR013033376","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50408318271761,"sku":"GOR003524507","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008412516625,"sku":"NIN9780815607274","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081560727X.jpg?v=1767353880"},{"product_id":"off-the-straight-path-book-elyse-semerdjian-9780815634638","title":"Off the Straight Path","description":"The legal treatment of sexual behavior is a subject that receives little scholarly attention in the field of Middle East women’s studies. Important questions about the relationship between sexuality and the law and about the societies enforcing that relationship are rarely addressed in the current literature. Elyse Semerdjian’s \"\"Off the Straight Path\"\" takes a bold step toward filling that gap, offering a fascinating look at the historical progression of Islamic law’s treatment of illicit sex.  Semerdjian provides a comprehensive review of the concept of zina, sexual indiscretion, exploring the diverse interpretation of zina crime as presented in a variety of sources from the Qur’an and hadith to legal literature. She then delves into the history of legal responses to zina within the specific community of Aleppo, Syria. Drawing on a wealth of shari ’a court records, Semerdjian brings to life Syrian society during the Ottoman period. With vivid detail, she describes specific women’s lives and experiences as their cases are presented before the court. Semerdjian argues that the actual treatment of zina crimes in the courts differs substantially from sentences prescribed by codifed Islamic jurisprudence. In contrast to the violent corporal punishments dictated in the Islamic legal code, the courts often punished crimes of sexual indiscretion with nonviolent sentences, such as removal from the community. Employing exceptional insight, \"\"Off the Straight Path\"\" presents a powerful challenge to the traditional view of Islamic law, enabling a richer understanding of Islamic society.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49917753950481,"sku":"CIN0815634633G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50515533299985,"sku":"CIN0815634633VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815634633.jpg?v=1761387273"},{"product_id":"arab-and-arab-american-feminisms-book-rabab-abdulhadi-9780815633860","title":"Arab and Arab American Feminisms","description":"Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centred struggles. Contributors hail from multiple geographical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. They employ a mix of genres to express feminist issues and highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50049632534801,"sku":"CIN0815633866G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815633866.jpg?v=1761391579"},{"product_id":"no-shame-for-the-sun-book-shahla-haeri-9780815629795","title":"No Shame for the Sun","description":"Six candid interviews introduce readers to a class of Muslim women rarely acknowledged in the West. The book aims to shed light on the status, conflicts and social realities of educated Muslim women in Pakistan. They tell of the conflicts and compromises with family and community, while facing violence, archaic marriage rules and locally entrenched codes of conduct. They speak of human dignity and gender equality, economic deprivation and social justice, and of feminism and fundamentalism. Challenging prevalent stereotypes, the book aims to reveal the uniqueness of each woman and the diversity of Pakistani women's life experiences, their world views and the struggles to change their society. Each chapter explores a particular woman's life experiences and her attempts to reconcile her career with her personal life, providing examples of ways of resolving religious, cultural and political conflicts. Through their struggles, professional Pakistani women have become conscious of their own and other women's situations within their society. Because they exercise power and authority in their chose fields, they risk losing their family's support and antagonizing their community. The book offers a perspective to reflect on the changing circumstances of professional Pakistani women, as well as on the established patterns and structural constraints within Pakistan. On a broader level, it examines western misconceptions regarding Islam, a religion that crosses many borders and impacts differently on many cultures.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50106200752401,"sku":"CIN0815629796G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50419879346449,"sku":"CIN0815629796VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50706010374417,"sku":"GOR014041988","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815629796.jpg?v=1767354670"},{"product_id":"anxiety-of-erasure-book-hanadi-al-samman-9780815634027","title":"Anxiety of Erasure","description":"Far from offering another study that bemoans Arab women’s repression and veiling, Anxiety of Erasure looks at Arab women writers living in the diaspora who have translated their experiences into a productive and creative force. In this book, Al-Samman articulates the therapeutic effects of revisiting forgotten histories and of activating two cultural tropes: that of the maw’udah (buried female infant) and that of Shahrazad in the process of revolutionary change. She asks what it means to develop a national, gendered consciousness from diasporic locals while staying committed to the homeland.  Al-Samman presents close readings of the fiction of five prominent authors whose works span over half a century and define the current status of Arab diaspora studies—Ghada al-Samman, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hamida al-Na’na’, Hoda Barakat, Samar Yazbek, and Salwa al-Neimi. Exploring the journeys in time and space undertaken by these women, Anxiety of Erasure shines a light on the ways in which writers remain participants in their homelands’ intellectual lives, asserting both the traumatic and the triumphant aspects of diaspora. The result is a nuanced Arab women’s poetic that celebrates rootlessness and rootedness, autonomy and belonging.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363219706129,"sku":"CIN0815634021G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363221311761,"sku":"CIN0815634021VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815634021.jpg?v=1761388505"},{"product_id":"interpreters-of-occupation-book-madeline-otis-campbell-9780815634379","title":"Interpreters of Occupation","description":"During the Iraq War, thousands of young Baghdadis worked as interpreters for US troops, becoming the front line of the so-called War on Terror. Deployed by the military as linguistic as well as cultural interpreters—translating the \"\"human terrain\"\" of Iraq—members of this network urgently honed identification strategies amid suspicion from US forces, fellow Iraqis, and, not least of all, one another. In Interpreters of Occupation, Campbell traces the experiences of twelve individuals from their young adulthood as members of the Ba’thist generation, to their work as interpreters, through their navigation of the US immigration pipeline, and finally to their resettlement in the United States. Throughout, Campbell considers how these men and women grappled with issues of belonging and betrayal, both on the battlefield in Iraq and in the US-based diaspora.   A nuanced and richly detailed ethnography, Interpreters of Occupation gives voice to a generation of US allies through their diverse and vividly rendered life histories. In the face of what some considered a national betrayal in Iraq and their experiences of otherness within the United States, interpreters negotiate what it means to belong to a diasporic community in flux.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363228586257,"sku":"CIN0815634374G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815634374.jpg?v=1761389270"},{"product_id":"anxiety-of-erasure-book-hanadi-al-samman-9780815636625","title":"Anxiety of Erasure","description":"Far from offering another study that bemoans Arab women’s repression and veiling, Anxiety of Erasure looks at Arab women writers living in the diaspora who have translated their experiences into a productive and creative force. In this book, Al-Samman articulates the therapeutic effects of revisiting forgotten histories and of activating two cultural tropes: that of the maw’udah (buried female infant) and that of Shahrazad in the process of revolutionary change. She asks what it means to develop a national, gendered consciousness from diasporic locals while staying committed to the homeland.  Al-Samman presents close readings of the fiction of six prominent authors whose works span over half a century and define the current status of Arab diaspora studies—Ghada al-Samman, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hamida al-Na‘na‘, Hoda Barakat, Samar Yazbek, and Salwa al-Neimi. Exploring the journeys in time and space undertaken by these women, Anxiety of Erasure shines a light on the ways in which writers remain participants in their homelands’ intellectual lives, asserting both the traumatic and the triumphant aspects of diaspora. The result is a nuanced Arab women’s poetic that celebrates rootlessness and rootedness, autonomy and belonging.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363245166865,"sku":"CIN0815636628G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815636628.jpg?v=1761389313"},{"product_id":"voices-from-iran-book-mahnaz-kousha-9780815629818","title":"Voices from Iran","description":"In the late 1990s, Mahnaz Kousha interviewed 15 Iranian women in Tehran who originally came from cities and towns throughout Iran. The youngest was 38, the eldest in her 50s. Extensive excerpts from their dialogues comprise the heart of this volume. The women explore their relationships with their mothers, fathers, husbands and children. They reflect upon the institutions of courtship and marriage and address issues of childcare, housework and women's employment. They talk openly about their concerns, ambitions and frustrations. Finally, they discuss everyday personal problems and the solutions they devise to cope with such difficulties. Offset by commentary, the conversations offer firsthand insights into the life experiences of the modern Iranian woman and her search for identity. Aiming to fill a gap in the study of gender and family relationships in Iran, the books footnotes on similar studies in the US and other countries mean the text should be relevant beyond Iran and the Middle East.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50799643099409,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50799643296017,"sku":"GOR006411860","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53222807896337,"sku":"NIN9780815629818","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53226847600913,"sku":"CIN0815629818A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815629818.jpg?v=1767355397"},{"product_id":"representing-the-unpresentable-book-negar-mottahedah-9780815631798","title":"Representing the Unpresentable","description":"In this pioneering book, Negar Mottahedeh explores the central issues of vision and visibility in Iranian culture. She focuses on historical and literary texts to understand the use of visual culture in the production of the contemporary nation. Tracing the historical mediation and dissemination of ideas for national reform in the modern period of Iran, the book examines the various discourses that have constituted the image of the \"\"Babi.\"\" As cinema began to displace other forms of Iranian entertainment, Islamic culture attempted to keep the motion picture industry free from what it perceived to be the taint of foreign values and intervention. With rich insight and compelling detail, Mottahedeh looks at the revealing ways in which Iranian cinema has dealt with representing the unpresentable. In her exploration of gender and Iranian film, the author argues powerfully against contemporary uses of veiling in the representation of Iran as a modern nation. This highly original work, signaling a paradigm shift in Iranian studies and gender studies, will be an invaluable resource for scholars.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50944305529105,"sku":"NGR9780815631798","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815631790.jpg?v=1767355050"},{"product_id":"words-not-swords-book-farzaneh-milani-9780815632788","title":"Words, not Swords","description":"A woman not only needs a room of her own, as Virginia Woolf wrote, but also the freedom to leave it and return to it at will; for a room without that right becomes a prison cell. The privilege of self-directed movement, the power to pick up and go as one pleases, has not been a traditional \"\"right\"\" of Iranian women. This prerogative has been denied them in the name of piety, anatomy, chastity, class, safety, and even beauty. It is only during the last 160 years that the spell has been broken and Iranian women have emerged as a moderating, modernizing force. Women writers have been at the forefront of this desegregating movement and renegotiation of boundaries. Words, Not Swords explores the legacy of sex segregation and its manifestations in Iranian literature and film and in notions of beauty and the erotics of passivity. Milani expands her argument beyond Iranian culture, arguing that freedom of movement is a theme that crosses frontiers and dissolves conventional distinctions of geography, history, and religion. She makes bold connections between veiling and foot binding, between Cinderella and Barbie, between the figures of the female Gypsy and the witch. In so doing, she challenges cultural hierarchies that divert attention from key issues in the control of women across the globe.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51008229179665,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008232489233,"sku":"NIN9780815632788","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53507417473297,"sku":"CIN0815632789VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815632789.jpg?v=1767349546"},{"product_id":"arab-family-studies-book-suad-joseph-9780815635581","title":"Arab Family Studies","description":"Family remains the most powerful social idiom and one of the most powerful social structures throughout the Arab world. To engender love of nation among its citizens, national movements portray the nationas a family. To motivate loyalty, political leaders frame themselves as fathers, mothers, brothers, or sisters to their clients, parties, or the citizenry. To stimulate production, economic actors evoke the sense of duty and mutual commitment of family obligation. To sanctify their edicts, clerics wrap religion in the moralities of family and family in the moralities of religion. Social and political movements, from the most secular to the most religious, pull on the tender strings of family love to recruit and bind their members to each other. To call someone family is to offer them almost the highest possible intimacy, loyalty, rights, reciprocities, and dignity. In recognizing the significance of the concept of family, this state-of- the-art literature review captures the major theories, methods, and case studies carried out on Arab families over the past century. The book offers a country-by-country critical assessment of the available scholarship on Arab families. Sixteen chapters focus on specific countries or groups of countries; seven chapters offer examinationsof the literature on key topical issues. Joseph’s volume provides an indispensable resource to researchers and students, and advances Arab family studies as a critical independent field of scholarship.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51008344523025,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008347898129,"sku":"NIN9780815635581","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815635583.jpg?v=1761387409"},{"product_id":"women-s-voices-in-middle-east-museums-book-carol-malt-9780815630784","title":"Women's Voices in Middle East Museums","description":"Written with verve and style, this book begins with an historical overview of the museums of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and the West Bank of Palestine and then focuses on the museums of Jordan and the women who work in them. Carol Malt intertwines a history of Islam and a discussion of the emerging public role of women in Muslim society. A museum director herself, the author provides a unique perspective and meaningful insights into the lives and work of twenty-four women who founded, curate, administer, and support Jordan's museums. Their individual and collective contributions to the development of cultural institutions in Jordan are well documented by Malt. Interviews with women in leadership positions capture the difficulties and demands of balancing their profession and maintaining their traditional family lifestyles.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51008455082257,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008457539857,"sku":"NIN9780815630784","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815630786.jpg?v=1767354333"},{"product_id":"war-s-other-voices-book-miriam-cooke-9780815603771","title":"War's Other Voices","description":"This is a study of Arab writers such as Ghada al-Samman, Hanan al-Shaikh, Emily Nasrallah and Etel Adnan. It presents a constructive literary approach to the ravages of the civil war in the Lebanon. The ways in which women's consciousness is awakened in terms of female liberation is a theme.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008486179089,"sku":"NIN9780815603771","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51323661025553,"sku":"CIN0815603770VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815603770.jpg?v=1767354143"},{"product_id":"missing-persians-book-nasrin-rahimieh-9780815628378","title":"Missing Persians","description":"This work serves to articulate the disparate, dispersed, and displaced narratives of five Persian subjects. Its complex arguments show five figures' links to a stable Persian identity - complicated by their experiences of travel, exile, conversion, and social change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51191987110161,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51191987994897,"sku":"NIN9780815628378","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52683632443665,"sku":"NLS9780815628378","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815628374.jpg?v=1767347688"},{"product_id":"best-of-hard-times-book-gustavo-barbosa-9780815637233","title":"The Best of Hard Times","description":"The Best of Hard Times explores the gendered identities of two generations of men in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. Gustavo Barbosa compares the fida'iyyin, the men who served as freedom fighters to reconquer Palestine in the 1970s, to the shabab, their sons who lead seemingly mundane lives with limited access to power. While the fida'iyyinn displayed their masculinity through active resistance and fighting to return to their homeland, the shabab have a more nuanced relationship to Palestine and articulate their gender belonging in alternative ways.  Through vivid ethnographic stories, Barbosa critically engages with certain trends in feminism, calling attention to their limits and considering nimble views on gender. Instead of presenting the shabab as emasculated or experiencing a crisis of masculinity, the book shows the pliability of masculinity in time and space and argues that \"\"gender\"\" has limited purchase to capture the experiences of today's youth from Shatila. Based on two years of fieldwork, The Best of Hard Times answers the burgeoning demand for anthropological literature on Arab masculinities and portrays refugees as inventive actors rather than agentless victims of circumstances beyond their control. The Best of Hard Times is a tour de force combining highbrow theory with gripping ethnography, challenging many of the stereotypes on gender, power, statehood, and the role of Islam in the Middle East.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51490757738769,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51490757869841,"sku":"GOR014301578","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815637233.jpg?v=1761388151"},{"product_id":"living-law-book-rosemary-admiral-9780815611844","title":"Living Law","description":"When modern debates about Islamic law and women’s rights make headlines, they often overlook centuries of history where Muslim women actively engaged with and shaped Islamic legal traditions. In Living Law, Rosemary Admiral reveals how women in premodern Morocco weren’t merely subjects of Islamic law—they were savvy legal actors who used religious courts and scholarly opinions to advocate for their rights and protect their interests.     Drawing on a rich collection of fatwas (legal opinions) from the Maliki school of Islamic law, Admiral reconstructs a world where women negotiated marriage contracts, secured their financial futures, and built partnerships that aligned with their vision of family life. These women, though not formally trained as legal scholars, displayed sophisticated knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence and skillfully navigated the legal system to achieve their goals.     Living Law offers an interdisciplinary perspective that challenges simplistic narratives about gender and Islamic law. Admiral demonstrates how the Maliki legal tradition in Morocco—a region that remained outside Ottoman control—provided women with tools to renegotiate their rights through contract stipulations and consultations with local scholars. The result is a nuanced portrait of how Islamic law functioned not as an unchangeable divine mandate, but as a living tradition shaped by the communities it served.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51598581629201,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51598587166993,"sku":"NGR9780815611844","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53500004270353,"sku":"CIN0815611846G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815611846.jpg?v=1767356370"},{"product_id":"palestinian-women-s-activism-book-islah-jad-9780815636144","title":"Palestinian Women's Activism","description":"Jad traces the transformation of the Palestinian women's movement from the 1930s to the post-Oslo period and through the Second Intifada to examine the often-fraught relationship between women and nationalism in Palestine. Offering one of the first intensive studies of Islamist women's activism, Jad also explores the impact of emerging feminist NGOs in depoliticizing the secular Palestinian women's movement. Studying these two developments together illuminates the nature of women's engagement in the Palestinian space, challenging myths of gender roles' ?immutability? under Islam and the supposed ?modernizing? benefits of Western-style activism.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51686679380241,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51686680002833,"sku":"CIN0815636148VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815636148.jpg?v=1767354286"},{"product_id":"lines-of-flight-assemblages-of-home-book-leila-hudson-9780815611950","title":"Lines of Flight, Assemblages of Home","description":"While humanitarian organizations and media outlets often reduce Syrian refugees to statistics or brief anecdotes, the real story of displacement unfolds in the intimate spaces of family life. Through the interwoven narratives of five middle-aged sisters from Damascus, Lines of Flight, Assemblages of Home reveals how Syrian women navigate war, exile, and the profound transformation of their families and identities. \t  \t  \tDrawing on extensive interviews conducted between 2015 and 2017, this book follows an extended Sunni Muslim family as they flee their homes in Damascus’s Eastern Ghouta suburbs and scatter across Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, and eventually Europe. As these women move through an increasingly hostile landscape of border controls, refugee camps, and human trafficking networks, they must reinvent themselves—from stable middle-class mothers to resourceful survivors, from guardians of tradition to architects of change. Their journeys challenge conventional assumptions about refugee experiences, revealing how displacement reconfigures family networks, religious practices, and gender roles. \t  \t  \tLeila Hudson’s intimate portrait of Syrian displacement offers vital insights for researchers and practitioners working in humanitarian assistance, refugee resettlement, and forced migration. It provides essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how ordinary families navigate extraordinary circumstances, and how women in particular bear both the burdens and opportunities of displacement.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51699515326737,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51699515556113,"sku":"NGR9780815611950","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815611951.jpg?v=1757760520"},{"product_id":"fatema-mernissi-for-our-times-book-minoo-moallem-9780815638568","title":"Fatema Mernissi for Our Times","description":"This volume pays tribute to the late Fatema Mernissi, a pioneering feminist sociologist and writer whose work profoundly influenced feminist and civic activism in Muslim and Arab societies and beyond. Bringing together an international group of scholars, the book explores pressing issues of women, gender, and sexuality in Muslim and Arab countries and their diasporas, engaging in a dynamic dialogue with Mernissi’s work.  The collection examines Mernissi’s contributions through three key axes: her challenge to uneven transnational geopolitical power relations; her unique approach to Islamic feminism, positing compatibility between egalitarian interpretations of Islam and social justice; and her feminist decolonial approach that both deconstructs hegemonic knowledge frames and produces new forms of knowledge.  With original essays by scholars of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including anthropology, sociology, development studies, queer studies, literature, and regional studies, this volume offers fresh perspectives on Mernissi’s influential ideas. Each contributor engages with Mernissi’s work using her feminist theoretical framework, while extending it into their specific areas of scholarship.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51789181911313,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51789182271761,"sku":"NGR9780815638568","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780815638568.jpg?v=1766225290"},{"product_id":"fatema-mernissi-for-our-times-book-minoo-moallem-9780815638575","title":"Fatema Mernissi for Our Times","description":"This volume pays tribute to the late Fatema Mernissi, a pioneering feminist sociologist and writer whose work profoundly influenced feminist and civic activism in Muslim and Arab societies and beyond. Bringing together an international group of scholars, the book explores pressing issues of women, gender, and sexuality in Muslim and Arab countries and their diasporas, engaging in a dynamic dialogue with Mernissi’s work.  The collection examines Mernissi’s contributions through three key axes: her challenge to uneven transnational geopolitical power relations; her unique approach to Islamic feminism, positing compatibility between egalitarian interpretations of Islam and social justice; and her feminist decolonial approach that both deconstructs hegemonic knowledge frames and produces new forms of knowledge.  With original essays by scholars of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including anthropology, sociology, development studies, queer studies, literature, and regional studies, this volume offers fresh perspectives on Mernissi’s influential ideas. Each contributor engages with Mernissi’s work using her feminist theoretical framework, while extending it into their specific areas of scholarship.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51789184860433,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51789185220881,"sku":"NGR9780815638575","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52902067306769,"sku":"CIN0815638574G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52948551401745,"sku":"CIN0815638574VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"embracing-the-divine-book-akram-khater-9780815632610","title":"Embracing the Divine","description":"Hindiyya al–’Ujaimi, a young eighteenth–century nun whose faith was matched by her ambition and intellect, lies at the heart of this absorbing history of Middle Eastern Christianity. At the age of twenty-six, Hindiyya left her hometown of Aleppo to establish a convent in the mountains of Lebanon. Her order and her growing public profile as a visionary and living saint met with stiff opposition from Latin missionaries and with mistrust from the Vatican. Church authorities were suspicious of feminine spirituality and independent religious authority, eventually subjecting her to two Inquisitions by the Vatican. Sentenced to spend her entire life imprisoned, Hindiyya died in 1798 in her cell, leaving a legacy that shaped the church for many years to come. Compelling in its cinematic scope—resplendent with the requisite villains and mysterious events infused with sinister and sexual tensions, tragedy, and pathos—Hindiyya’s story holds within its folds a larger tale about the construction of a new Christianity in the Levant. Khater skillfully reveals what her story tells us about religious minorities in the Middle East, early modern cultural encounters between the West and the Middle East, and the relationship between gender, modernity, and religion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51817466265873,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51817466626321,"sku":"CIN0815632614VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780815632610.jpg?v=1767352958"},{"product_id":"pioneers-or-pawns-book-marina-de-regt-9780815631217","title":"Pioneers or Pawns?","description":"Using the Hodeida Urban Primary Health Care Project as a case study, Marina de Regt offers a fascinating analysis of how development policies of the state interconnect with agendas of global donor organizations and the employment of women in the face of social disapproval and barriers to advancement. She demonstrates women's positive impact on the complex workings of Yemeni health institutions. Her highly accessible writing blends keen observations steeped in personal experience with a thorough grounding in the theoretical literature. Through interviews and the experience of working directly with the women she writes about, de Regt gives voice to her subjects and offers an extraordinary portrait of the lives, emotions, and work of women dedicated to healing in a time of great political change. This vitally important work not only challenges preconceived notions about how health care is distributed in the Middle East but also questions the way women participate, facilitate, and resist the political change around them.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52280430559505,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52280434557201,"sku":"CIN0815631219VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780815631217.jpg?v=1767350482"},{"product_id":"arab-and-arab-american-feminisms-book-rabab-abdulhadi-9780815632238","title":"Arab and Arab American Feminisms","description":"In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles among Arab communities. Contributors hail from multiple geo­graphical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist issues and highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces: within families and communities; in anticolonial and antiracist struggles; in debates over spirituality and the divine; within radical, feminist, and queer spaces; in academia and on the street; and among each other. Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the restoration of Arab Jews to Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belong­ing when the country in which they live wages wars in the lands of their ancestors. Arab and Arab American Feminisms opens up new possibili­ties for placing grounded Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives at the center of gender studies, Middle East studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52509457514769,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52509457580305,"sku":"CIN0815632231G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780815632238.jpg?v=1761387795"},{"product_id":"muslim-women-and-politics-of-participation-book-mahnaz-afkhami-9780815627609","title":"Muslim Women and Politics of Participation","description":"This volume is about the ways of promoting women's participation in the affairs of Muslim societies: from raising conciousness and changing codes of law, to penetrating the economic markets and influencing national and international policies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53397556658449,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53397556756753,"sku":"NIN9780815627609","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780815627609.jpg?v=1775916251"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/gender-culture-and-politics-in-the-middle-east-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}