Dr Lucia Sorbera (Chair of Department of Arabic Language and Cultures) interviews Visiting Professor Nicola Pratt (Reader in International Relations at Warwick University) about the shifting approaches within feminist Middle East scholarship.

The relationship between feminist/women’s studies and Middle East studies has been as much promising and challenging since its first inceptions. It is certainly true that the use of feminist lenses to understand the history of Islam, the Arab world and the Middle East has enormously contributed to the post-orientalist revolution in the field.

Feminist post-colonial scholars have not only questioned and challenged orientalist myths about Muslim and Middle Eastern women, but through their scholarship they advocated for a broader epistemic shift in the ways Islam, Muslims, the Arab World and the Middle East have been studied and understood by both indigenous and international scholars.

As the scholarship is shifting from post-colonial to decolonial epistemes, trying to embed indigenous epistemologies in the discourse, we are experiencing a new turn. How does a decolonial approach differ from a post-colonial or post-orientalist approach to Middle East women’s and gender studies? How are scholars of the Middle East decolonising women and gender studies?

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST AT THE LINK BELOW

----

ArabSouth is a podcast from the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney. It is currently produced by Drs Lucia Sorbera, Nesrine Basheer and Ali Aldahesh.

School of Languages and Cultures - The University of Sydney, Australia