Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought | Susanna Ferguson

Ottoman History Podcast

E569 | What does the history of modern Arab political thought look like from the perspective of women authors? In this podcast, we sit down with longtime Ottoman History Podcast contributor Susanna Ferguson to explore this question, which animates her new book Labors of Love: Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought. Previous scholarship has focused on the role of women in discussing the roles of women, but as Prof. Ferguson argues, women writers of the 19th and 20th century can also be studied as producers of social theory and commentators on the important matters of their era. In our conversation, we use the lens of public discourse about child-rearing or tarbiyah as a window onto ideas about a wide range of topics, including morality, labor, and democratic governance. In doing so, we consider the importance of seeing the Arab world as a source of portable ideas about modern society, as opposed to a merely passive recipient of Western modernity. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2024/09/sferg.html Suzie Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at Smith College. She writes and teaches on the history of gender, sexuality, and political thought in the modern Arab world. She is the author of Labors of Love: Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought (Stanford University Press). Chris Gratien is Associate Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century. CREDITS Episode No. 569 Release Date: 30 September 2024 Recording location: Istanbul Sound production by Chris Gratien Music: Chad Crouch - Pacing Images and bibliography courtesy of Susanna Ferguson available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2024/09/sferg.html