2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

"'Our Muslim Sisters:' Muslim Women, Reform, and Religious Discourse in Twentieth Century French Algeria" explores how Muslim and Christian religious discourse informed reforms directed towards the Muslim woman in French Algeria throughout the twentieth century.  Beginning in the interwar period, Sara Rahnama's paper examines how reinterpretations of the Qur'an and early Islamic history informed the arguments about Muslim women's rights in the interwar press.  Emily Lord Fransee's paper moves to the period after World War II until the end of the Algerian War and interrogates how the development of gendered voting booths relied on particular understandings about Muslim women's "essential" religious nature.  Situated in the decade immediately after Algerian independence, Elise Franklin's paper investigates how private Christian social aid organizations pushed a modernizing agenda aimed specifically at Muslim women.  Together these papers explore how ideas about Muslim women were formed and remade throughout the twentieth century in Algeria to serve a variety of social, cultural, and political ends.