Shahrzad Mojab
Shahrzad Mojab is the Director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto and Professor at the Department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT). Shahrzad's areas of research and teaching are minority women's access to education; educational policy studies; comparative and international education; anti-racism education; critical and feminist pedagogy; feminism and nationalism; gender, state, diaspora and transnationality; women, war, militarization and violence; women, war and learning; and feminism, colonialism and imperialism; and cultural relativism as an ideological tool. Her publications include, among others, articles and book chapters on ‘Islamic Feminism’, feminism and nationalism, adult education and the construction of civil society in the Middle East, women’s NGOs and transnationalism, and diaspora, feminism and neo-liberalism. She is the editor of Women of A Non States Nation: The Kurds, co-editor of Of Property and Propriety: The Role of Gender and Class in Imperialism and Nationalism, and Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges. She is currently conducting SSHRC-funded research on war, diaspora, and learning; women political prisoners in the Middle East; and war and transnational women’s organizations (Women, War, Diaspora, and Learning: Research Resources: www.utoronto.ca/wwdl.)
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: The solitude of the stateless-Kurdish women at
the margins of feminist knowledge
Shahrzad Mojab 1
PART I: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
1. En-Gendering Nationalism: The 'Women Question' in
Kurdish Nationalism Discourse of the Late Ottoman Period
Janet Klein 25
2. Kurdish Women in Constantinople at the Beginning of the
Twentieth Century
Rohat Alakom 53
3. Women and Nationalism in the Kurdish Republic of 1946
Shahrzad Mojab 71
PART II: POLITICAL AND LEGAL PERSPECTIVES
4. From Adela Khanum to Leyla Zana: Women as Political
Leaders in Kurdish History
Martin van Bruinessen 95
5. Kurdish Migrant Women in Istanbul: Community and Resources
for Local Political Participation of a Marginalized
Social Group
Heidi Wedel 113
6. Kurdish Women and Self-Determination: A Feminist
Approach to International Law
Susan McDonald 135
PART III: SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES
7. Medic, Mystic or Magic? Women's Health Choices in a Kurdish
City
Maria O'Shea 161
8.Folklore and Fantasy: The Presentation of Women in Kurdish
Oral Tradition
Christine Allison 181
9. Portraits of Kurdish Women in Contemporary Sufism
Annabelle Böttcher 195
10. Western Images of the Woman's Role in Kurdish Society
Mirella Galletti 209
11. The (re)production of patriarchy in the Kurdish language
Amir Hassanpour 227