Panel | Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon: Feminist and Queer Movements in the Transnational Middle East

Postcolonial Questions & Performances presents a panel sponsored by the Office of Provost Jerome Williams, the Department of English & the Honors College and supported by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Rutgers University-Newark.

Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon: Feminist and Queer Movements in the Transnational Middle East

Moderator: Nermin Allam, Rutgers University

Vulnerable Publics and Feminist and LGBTI/Queer Politics in Contemporary Turkey
Asli Zengin, Brown University

Prof Zengin’s research lies at the intersection of ethnography of gender non-conforming lives and deaths; Islamic and medico-legal regimes of sex, gender and sexuality; critical studies of violence and sovereignty; as well as transnational aspects of LGBTQ movements in the Middle East with a special focus on Turkey. She is the author of Intimacy of Power: Women Prostitutes, Sex Work and Violence in Istanbul, andis completing her second book manuscript Trouble with Ambiguity: The State, Islam, Family, and Transgender Embodiment in Contemporary Turkey. 

Queer and Feminist Movements in Lebanon: Intersections and Impasses
Maya Mikdashi, Rutgers University

Prof Mikdashi is completing a book manuscript that examines the “war on terror”, sexual difference, secularism and state power in the contemporary Middle East from the vantage point of Lebanon. She is the cofounding editor of the e-zine Jadaliyya.com. She is also a filmmaker and writer, she co-directed the documentary film About Baghdad (2004) and directed Notes on The War (2006) and more recently she co-conceptualized, co-wrote with Carlos Motto the historical fantasy film set in 19thcentury Beirut and Bogota, Deseos/رغبات.

Feminisms in Iraq: challenges and future
Zahra Ali, Rutgers University

Prof Ali is a sociologist, her research exploresdynamics of women and gender, social and political movements in relation to Islam(s), the Middle East and contexts of war and conflict with a focus on contemporary Iraq. She is also interested in (post)coloniality, decolonial feminisms and epistemologies. Ali is the author of Women and Gender in Iraq: between Nation-building and Fragmentation(Cambridge University Press, 2018), she also edited the book Féminismes Islamiques(La Fabrique, 2012) and co-edited with Prof Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun the journal volume Pluriversalisme Décolonial(Kimé, 2017).

Wednesday September 12
5.30 pm
Dana Room
John Cotton Dana Library
185 University Avenue
Rutgers University-Newark