Khartoum at Night : Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan / Marie Grace Brown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Marie Grace, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Sudan--Social conditions--20th century.

Women's clothing--Sudan--History--20th century.

Women--Political activity--Sudan--History--20th century.

Fashion--Political aspects--Sudan--History--20th century.

Human body--Political aspects--Sudan--History--20th century.

Sudan--Politics and government--1899-1956.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In the first half of the twentieth century, a pioneering generation of young women exited their homes and entered public space, marking a new era for women's civic participation in northern Sudan. A provocative new public presence, women's civic engagement was at its core a bodily experience. Amid the socio-political upheavals of imperial rule, female students, medical workers, and activists used a careful choreography of body movements and fashion to adapt to imperial mores, claim opportunities for political agency, and shape a new standard of modern, mobile womanhood. Khartoum at Night is the first English-language history of these women's lives, examining how their experiences of the British Empire from 1900–1956 were expressed on and through their bodies. Central to this story is the tobe: a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman's head and body. Marie Grace Brown shows how northern Sudanese women manipulated the tucks, folds, and social messages of the tobe to deftly negotiate the competing pulls of modernization and cultural authenticity that defined much of the imperial experience. Her analysis weaves together the threads of women's education and activism, medical midwifery, urban life, consumption, and new behaviors of dress and beauty to reconstruct the worlds of politics and pleasure in which early-twentieth-century Sudanese women lived.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Figures

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration

Introduction

1. The Post Office Pen: The Imperial Mission

2. “Forty White Tobes”: Enclosures and the Campaign for Pure Bodies

3. The Schoolmistresses’ Ribs:Dress, Discipline, and Progress

4. The Woman’s Voice: Claiming City Streets

5. Khartoum at Night:Global Politics and Personal Pleasures

Conclusion

Postscript

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

9781503602687

1503602680

OCLC:

1178769044