Gendering (Counter) Revolutions in the Middle East

Professor Nadje Al-Ali

Gendering (Counter) Revolutions in the Middle East, Professor Nadje Al-Ali (SOAS)

Does gender matter in revolutionary times? Is democracy bad for women? How do authoritarian regimes instrumentalize women and men? In this talk, Professor Nadje Al-Ali will address the gendered implications of recent political developments in the Middle East and North Africa. She will argue that women and gender are key to both revolutionary and counter- revolutionary processes and developments and not marginal to them. Her talk will explore the historical context of women’s political participation as well as marginalization in political transitions. She will focus on the centrality of women’s bodies and sexualities, militarized masculinities and the underlying political economies that privilege authoritarianism and social inequalities.

Biography

Nadje Al-Ali is Professor of Gender Studies at the Centre for Gender Studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her main research interests revolve around gender theory; feminist activism; women and gender in the Middle East; transnational migration and diaspora moblization; war, conflict and reconstruction’ art & cultural studies and food. Her publications include What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (2009, University of California Press, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives (Zed Books, 2009, co-edited with Nicola Pratt); Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (2007, Zed Books); New Approaches to Migration (ed., Routledge, 2002, with Khalid Koser); Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press 2000) and Gender Writing – Writing Gender (The American University in Cairo Press, 1994) as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles. Her most recent book (co-edited with Deborah al-Najjar) is entitled We are Iraqis: Aesthetics & Politics in a Time of War (Syracuse University Press).

Professor Al-Ali was President of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) from 2009-2011. She is also a member of the Feminist Review Collective and a founding member of Act Together: Women’s Action for Iraq . She is currently involved in several projects with Iraqi academics and women’s rights activists with the aim to facilitate the introduction of women and gender studies and increase evidence-based research capacity in Iraq.

Organiser: Bloomsbury Gender Network hosted by the SOAS Centre for Gender Studies

Contact email: rs94@soas.ac.uk