... curates a space for the creative expression of LGBTQ folks in the MENA/SWANA region and across the spectrum of migration. To stay true to its original purpose of creating migrant-centered spaces, Zaʾfaraan does not require submissions to be composed in English. All written submissions are translated...

... of women entrepreneurs in starting their own businesses, focusing on the Al-Dhahira region of Oman. Data were collected through a structured survey questionnaire. The study identified the major characteristics of women entrepreneurs that inspired them to start their businesses. An urge to balance the work...

... August 5, 2014 Nawar Al-Hassan Golley Consortium of Gender and Women’s Studies in the Arab Region To build new programs and support existing ones requires devoted and qualified faculty, sympathetic administrators, and funding. The small number of scholars who met in August 2012...

... of a thematic focus for this section of the journal. The effects of economic sanctions in the countries of the SWANA region (Southwest Asia and North Africa) came to mind as a theme that could allow for a broad interdisciplinary discussion and a necessary one. While scholarship on this issue emerged in the late...

...Sedef Arat-Koç This paper proposes that regional feminisms would be productive in avoiding some of the problems of “global feminism” or the co-opted shapes feminist transnationalism might take when it serves the priorities of international organizations or imperial powers. While Middle Eastern...

... Mandate Syria and Lebanon (1921–46). The French metropolitan system of regulated prostitution was imported yet transformed in the mandate region as women performers were sorted into legitimate, if morally suspect, foreign artistes and autochthonous performers defined as prostitutes by decrees and codes...

..., in a transnational context, the construction of an anthropology of culture by women of the region and the establishment of a Maghrebi women’s network enabled the torch of women’s rights to pass from women in Tunisia, where the Personal Status Code (PSC) was a model for the region, to women in Morocco, whose...

... participating in a modern nation-building process in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq in the period of 1991–2003. The study is based on fieldwork among Kurdish women in Canada, Britain, Sweden, and Iraqi Kurdistan. We have analyzed the activities of four women’s organizations in the diaspora and have traced...

...Liat Kozma; Nicole Khayat Abstract Historians of the professionalization of medicine in colonized regions, including the Middle East, have mostly focused on male practitioners, whereas histories of women in the medical professions are mostly centered in Western societies. The present issue examines...

... of the security state, and the redefinition of masculinity, this article analyzes the shifting gender dynamics that influence labor protests in Egypt. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in two textile factories of the Nile Delta region between 2008 and 2010, I argue that protest is a phase of transgression...

...Attiya Ahmad Abstract In recent years marriages among Muslims of different ethnonational backgrounds have developed in the Gulf region. While proponents of these “Muslim marriages” depict them as transnational alternatives to ethnonational forms of affinity and belonging, as I discuss...

...J. Andrew Bush Abstract Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, this article tracks the imbrication of ordinary and mystical desire in the life of a Muslim man who disavows pietistic forms of ethical striving. It examines the way tropes of desire from Sufi poetry affect...

... of its 1996 version, in which the state declared its “determination to abide by the universally recognised human rights.” However, while the state is often hailed in the international forums and media as a true trendsetter in the realm of women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa region...

...Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli; Marcia C. Inhorn Male infertility, which contributes to roughly 60–70% of infertility cases in the Middle East, is especially agonizing in this region, where fatherhood is crucial to achieving masculine adulthood and community standing. In this paper, we compare...

...Noor Al-Qasimi This article examines how the phenomenon of the ‘abaya-as-fashion is accommodated by the hegemonic order of Islamic patriarchy in the region of the Arab Gulf states. The traditional ‘abaya, or body veil commonly worn by national women across the Arab Gulf, is juxtaposed against...

...Petra Kuppinger Hülya Kandemir’s book, Himmelstochter (Daughter of heaven), chronicles her transformation from a well-known regional pop singer to a pious Muslima in Germany. Kandemir describes her turn to Islam and the ensuing fine-tuned construction of a modern pious Muslim subjectivity...

... of this violence as a symbol of the depravity of those regions soon to come under European domination. The paper draws on a range of materials, including pirate captivity narratives, European and Ottoman state documents, and legal opinions. Judith E. Tucker is Professor of History at Georgetown University...

..., but an understudied and unappreciated dimension of the lived experience of manhood in the region. Marcia C. Inhorn is Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, the Program in Women’s Studies, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan...

... as well from among Syrians, Palestinians, Kurds, Egyptians, and others in accordance with convenience and regional political circumstances. The long-term employment of Arab women in domestic service, with a primary focus on “live-in” maids, may be characterized as carrying a “burden” of obligation...