If North Africa is understudied by academics of the Middle East, the Maghreb is more so and Maghrebian women even more (Ennaji, Sadiqi, and Vintges 2016; Moghadam 1993; Sadiqi 2016). The four books under review direct attention to this region and link the multifaceted and gendered histories of the Maghreb to its present. Their local, regional, and transregional approaches make a valuable contribution to North African, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean studies. Employing novel approaches and methodologies, new theories, and new sources in the post–Arab Spring moment, the books highlight the role of gender in the making of the historical and contemporary political Maghreb.
Unlike most works on women in Ottoman households that focus on the Middle East, especially Turkey, Amy Aisen Kallander’s Women, Gender, and the Palace Households in Ottoman Tunisia spans the period from the sixteenth-century Ottoman conquest of Tunisia to the early nineteenth century. Starting...
