Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World

Ever since the uprisings that swept the Arab world, the role of Arab women in political transformations received unprecedented media attention. The copious commentary, however, has yet to result in any serious study of the gender dynamics of political upheaval. Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance is the first book to analyse the interplay between moments of sociopolitical transformation, emerging subjectivities and the different modes of women’s agency in forging new gender norms in the Arab world. Written by scholars and activists from the countries affected, including Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, this is an important addition to Middle Eastern gender studies.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance in the Arab World - Maha El Said, Lena Meari and Nicola Pratt Part 1 The Malleability of Gender and Sexuality in Revolutions and Resistance 1. Reconstructing Gender in Post-revolutionary Egypt - Shereen Abouelnaga 2. Re-signifying 'Sexual' Colonial Power Techniques: The Experiences of Palestinian Women Political Prisoners - Lena Meari 3. A Strategic Use of Culture: Egyptian Women's Subversion and Resignification of Gender Norms - Hala G. Sami Part 2 The Body and Resistance 4. She Resists: Body Politics Between Radical and Subaltern - Maha El-Said 5. Framing the Female Body: Beyond Morality and Pathology? - Abeer Al-Najjar and Anoud Abusalim 6. Women's Bodies in Post-Revolution Libya: Control and Resistance - Sahar Mediha Elnaas and Nicola Pratt Part 3 Gender and the Construction of the Secular/Islamist Binary 7. Islamic Feminism and the Equivocation of Political Engagement: 'Fair is Foul, and Foul is Fair' - Omaima Abou-Bakr 8. Islamic and Secular Women's Activism and Discourses in Post-uprising Tunisia - Aitemad Muhanna Conclusion: Towards New Epistemologies and Ontologies of Gender and Socio-Political Transformation in the Arab World - Maha El Said, Lena Meari and Nicola Pratt

About the Author :
Maha El Said is a professor at the English Department, Cairo University. She has more than 22 years of experience teaching at Egyptian universities with a special interest in American studies. She was the first to write a book-length dissertation on Arab-American poetry, in 1997. She has published on Arab-American writings, creative writing, popular culture and the impact of new technologies on literature. In 2003-2004 she was a Fulbright visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, where she researched the development of the spoken word as political expression. Lena Meari is an assistant professor at the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department and the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine. Her teaching, research interests and writing focus on settler colonialism in Palestine and formations of revolutionary movements, subjectivities, gender relations and development. Nicola Pratt is reader in the international politics of the Middle East at University of Warwick. She has been researching and writing about Middle East politics since the end of the 1990s and is particularly interested in feminist approaches as well as ‘politics from below’. Her work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, Review of International Studies and Review of International Political Economy, amongst others. She is author of Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World, co-author (with Nadje Al-Ali) of What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq and co-editor (with Sophie Richter-Devroe) of Gender, Governance and International Security and (with Nadje Al-Ali) Women and War in the Middle East. Between 2010 and 2013, she was co-director of the ‘Reconceptualising Gender: Transnational Perspectives’ research network with Birzeit University, Palestine. Maha El Said is a professor at the English Department, Cairo University. She has more than 22 years of experience teaching at Egyptian universities with a special interest in American studies. She was the first to write a book-length dissertation on Arab-American poetry, in 1997. She has published on Arab-American writings, creative writing, popular culture and the impact of new technologies on literature. In 2003-2004 she was a Fulbright visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, where she researched the development of the spoken word as political expression. Lena Meari is an assistant professor at the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department and the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine. Her teaching, research interests and writing focus on settler colonialism in Palestine and formations of revolutionary movements, subjectivities, gender relations and development. Nicola Pratt is reader in the international politics of the Middle East at University of Warwick. She has been researching and writing about Middle East politics since the end of the 1990s and is particularly interested in feminist approaches as well as ‘politics from below’. Her work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, Review of International Studies and Review of International Political Economy, amongst others. She is author of Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World, co-author (with Nadje Al-Ali) of What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq and co-editor (with Sophie Richter-Devroe) of Gender, Governance and International Security and (with Nadje Al-Ali) Women and War in the Middle East. Between 2010 and 2013, she was co-director of the ‘Reconceptualising Gender: Transnational Perspectives’ research network with Birzeit University, Palestine.

Review :
Complicating our understanding of the gendered genealogies and contours of resistance in the Arab world, Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance challenges dominant periodizations of revolutions in the region, mapping a new and persuasive historiography of deeply feminist concerns. An important and original contribution to transnational, postcolonial feminist scholarship. Every contributor here has insights to offer. I found myself re-thinking again and again what women activists created in the wake of their historic acts of political resistance. What a valuable book! If you are interested in Palestinian resistance of Israeli sexual interrogation techniques and/or the post-revolutionary politics of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and how they have placed the body and sexuality at center stage, this book offers fresh discussions of new approaches, debates and constructions that will help you appreciate the study of old and new forms of power and their complex relations. As its title suggests, this book is a must read for anyone interested in rethinking gender in revolution and resistance. This timely and exciting volume leaves no doubt that a gendered lens is key to understanding socio-political transformations in the Middle East. Prescient and insightful... succeeds in unpicking unfounded generalisations concerning both the nature of the Arab Spring and of women's participation and resistance. Boldly challenging Orientalist and liberalist analyses of the Arab world, El Said, Meari, and Pratt, assemble a set of brilliant interventions.