Reading Arab Feminist Texts: Key Debates on Women's Rights in the Arab World

This course provides a survey of key Arab feminist texts produced by writers, thinkers, and activists during the 20th and 21st centuries. As this is a language-based course, these texts will be read in the original Arabic alongside secondary sources that illuminate the central debates these texts engage with. This is a language-based discursive course designed to enable students to examine key Arab feminist texts and to consider these within broader social, cultural, and political contexts. It aims to historicise and explore the development of central debates on women's rights in the Arab world, including such issues as women's education, access to the public sphere, sexuality, the veil, and secular/religious feminisms. A selection of key texts by writers, thinkers, and activists from across the Arab world (such as Nawal El-Saadawi, Fatima Mernissi, and others) will be read and translated from the Arabic by students ahead of class. These texts may be autobiographical, creative, documentary, or theoretical in nature. Alongside this translation exercise, students will read relevant secondary texts that both contextualise and illustrate the arguments of the primary texts. Some of the primary texts will also be available in English and all texts will be discussed in class. The course draws on and develops students' linguistic abilities while simultaneously introducing important milestones and tensions in the struggle for women's rights in the Arab world. Credit Level: 10 Year taken: Year 4 Undergraduate