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Summer research and writing on Gender Studies, and Near and Middle Eastern History.

This project examines the relation between women, family and modernity in postcolonial Tunisia. It engages with scholarly interest in the relation between women, nationalism, and modernity, and debates regarding liberal and Islamic understandings of women's rights. Building upon feminist theorizations of agency, my project challenges the association between legislative recognition of women's equality, women's employment, and liberal individualism with emancipation. Chapters focus on the dissemination of the Tunisian government's "feminist" rhetoric, the image of women, family and modernity in the women's press, the portrayal of rural women by Tunisian social scientists, and how state investments in education and family planning contributed to reforming women into educated wives and mothers. Without claiming to explain the Tunisian Revolution, my research offers insight on Tunisian society and political culture before January 2011 through its attention to women and gender.