MESA Book Awards

 

Cornell University Press 

 

Conceptually rich and skillfully written, The Future is Feminist: Women and Social Change in Interwar Algeria explores the feminist possibilities that Muslims envisioned in Algeria in the context of French settler colonialism between the two World Wars.  Bringing a crucial gendered dimension to understanding interwar Algeria’s intellectual landscape, Sara Rahnama deftly weaves together historical analysis and feminist theory to understand how discussions of women’s labor, education, and dress (as well as men’s headgear) countered the colonial claim of Islam’s inherent misogyny and sought a new future for Algerian Muslim belonging in the modern world. Rahnama’s extensive analysis of prior interwar discussions resists a teleological focus on the War of Independence to reveal a fluid and broad range of feminist aspirations informed by Islam that contended with multiple social divisions while under the constraints of colonialism. An outstanding contribution to the study of gender and the history of the Middle East.