Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity / Edition 1

by Afsaneh Najmabadi

Overview

Drawing from a rich array of visual and literary material from nineteenth-century Iran, this groundbreaking book rereads and rewrites the history of Iranian modernity through the lens of gender and sexuality. Peeling away notions of a rigid pre-modern Islamic gender system, Afsaneh Najmabadi provides a compelling demonstration of the centrality of gender and sexuality to the shaping of modern culture and politics in Iran and of how changes in ideas about gender and sexuality affected conceptions of beauty, love, homeland, marriage, education, and citizenship. She concludes with a provocative discussion of Iranian feminism and its role in that country's current culture wars. In addition to providing an important new perspective on Iranian history, Najmabadi skillfully demonstrates how using gender as an analytic category can provide insight into structures of hierarchy and power and thus into the organization of politics and social life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520242630
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/25/2005
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	377
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Afsaneh Najmabadi, Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, is author of The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History (1998), among other books.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Beauty, Love, and Sexuality
1. Early Qajar
2. Nineteenth-Century Transformations
Part II. Cultural Labor of Sexuality and Gender
3. The Eclipse of the (Fe)Male Sun
4. Vatan, the Beloved; Vatan, the Mother
5. Women's Veil and Unveil
6. The Tragedy of Romantic Marriage
7. Crafting an Educated Wife and Mother
8. Women or Wives of the Nation?
Epilogue: Feminism and Its Burden of Birth
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Credits
Index

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From the Publisher

"Breaks new ground in both perspective and subject matter."—
Intl Journal of Middle East Stds (Ijmes)

Editorial Reviews

“Breaks new ground in both perspective and subject matter.

Intl Journal Of Middle East Stds (Ijmes)