
Book Project
A Comparative History of Feminism in Egypt and Turkey, 1880-1935:
Dialogue and Difference
A Comparative History of Feminism in Egypt and Turkey, 1880-1935: Dialogue and Difference investigates the interaction between organized women’s movements in Turkey and Egypt, and their relation with global women’s activism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Based on two years of archival research in Turkey, Egypt, and the United Kingdom, my project establishes a dialogue between Egyptian and Turkish feminisms, investigates both the secular and Islamic trends within them, and takes stock of their interactions with and resistances to western feminisms. By bringing the evolution of the feminist discourse in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in conversation with the secular and religious reform traditions in both countries in a comparative perspective, my work seeks to encourage a broader and more in-depth understanding of feminism in the Middle East, stripped from the dominant, nationalist narrative of its evolution.
Image (left) Huda Shaʿrāwī Library and Archives, Cairo, Egypt.
Photo credit: Gülşah Şenkol