The Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) is honored to cosponsor and participate in a celebration of the life and work of Nawal El Saadawi, who died on March 21, 2021, at the age of eighty-nine.
El Saadawi’s life and legacy are at the heart of what AMEWS stands for. Whether writing about medicine or women-related issues in politics, religion, and sexuality, El Saadawi had addressed topics central to the AMEWS mission since the organization’s inception in 1985.
Generations of AMEWS members have been inspired by El Saadawi’s life and writings. She broke taboos and linked the liberation of women with the political and cultural liberation of the nation—topics that so many AMEWS members wrote about and discussed in dozens of panels, hence transmitting her legacy from generation to generation.
Inside the MENA region, El Saadawi’s writings shocked governments, religious scholars, and intellectuals and subjected her to accusations of...
