The Women's Awakening in Egypt : Culture, Society, and the Press / Beth Baron.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baron, Beth, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Social conditions--19th century--Egypt.

Women.

Women--Intellectual life--20th century--Egypt.

Women's periodicals, Arabic--History--Egypt.

Women's periodicals, Arabic.

Egypt--Intellectual life--19th century.

Egypt.

Egypt--Intellectual life--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [1990]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Between 1892 and 1920 nearly thirty Arabic periodicals by, for, and about women were produced in Egypt for circulation throughout the Arab world. This flourishing women's press provided a forum for debating such topics as the rights of woman, marriage and divorce, and veiling and seclusion, and also offered a mechanism for disseminating new ideologies and domestic instruction. In this book, Beth Baron presents the first sustained study of this remarkable material, exploring the connections between literary culture and social transformation.Starting with profiles of the female intellectuals who pioneered the women's press in Egypt-the first generation of Arab women to write and publish extensively-Baron traces the women's literary output from production to consumption. She draws on new approaches in cultural history to examine the making of periodicals and to reconstruct their audience, and she suggests that it is impossible to assess the influence of the Arabic press without comprehending the circumstances under which it operated.Turning to specific issues argued in the pages of the women's press, Baron finds that women's views ranged across a wide spectrum. The debates are set in historical context, with elaborations on the conditions of women's education and work. Together with other sources, the journals show significant changes in the activities of urban middle- and upper-class Egyptian women in the decades before the 1919 revolution and underscore the sense that real improvement in women's lives-the women's awakening-was at hand. Baron's discussion of this extraordinary trove of materials highlights the voices of the female intellectuals who championed this awakening and broadens our understanding of the social and cultural history of the period.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE. FROM PRODUCTION TO CONSUMPTION

PART TWO. TEXTS AND SOCIAL CONTEXTS

CONCLUSION

NOTES

INDEX

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

0-300-16226-X

OCLC:

1121054136