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It is not Egypt's 2011 revolution that opened a space for women's and feminist activism, but—as this book shows—the long history of women's activism that created the intellectual and political background for revolution. By centering the experiences and ideas of multiple generations of women activists and intellectuals, Lucia Sorbera traces the feminist genealogies of Egypt's nationalist, student, Marxist, labor, human rights, and democratic social movements. Biography of a Revolution gathers a series of interrelated intimate and relational stories, charting in vivid detail the entanglements between women's aspirations across a century of politics and friendships. This historical analysis innovatively deploys decolonial and indigenous feminist epistemologies, bringing women's, gender, and feminist history into the center of Egypt's political, social, and intellectual history. More than a decade after the 2013 military coup, women's intellectual and political activism remains crucial to keeping the embers of revolution aglow.
Price: $29.95
Pages: 356
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
13 May 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520394759
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
“The author’s accessible writing will reach both specialist and curious readers, including non-Arabic speakers. The great strength of the book is to make the voices of these women heard and their work understood and known by both an academic and a general readership.”
Lucia Sorbera is Associate Professor and Chair of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration, Transcription, and Translation
Introduction
Part One. The Long Feminist Century in Egypt
1. Genealogies of Women's Activism
2. The Fight for Women's Bodily Rights: The FGM Task Force
3. Gendered Dimensions of the Post–Cold War Order in Egypt
4. Toward a Women's History of the Human Rights Movement in Egypt
Part Two. Feminist Lives in Egypt
5. Practicing Feminist Psychiatry as Human Rights Activism: Aida Seif El-Dawla, Suzan Fayad, and Magda Adly
6. Conceptualizing Women's Rights within the Family as Human Rights: The Intellectual and Grassroots Work of Azza Soliman
7. Toward an Ethics of Care: The Political Journey of Gameela Ismail
8. Transgenerational Legacies in the Early 2000s Social Movements: Mahienour El-Massry and Sanaʾ al-Masri
Part Three. Toward New Ways of Being, Knowing, and Doing
9. January 25, 2011: A New Feminist Beginning
10. Historicizing the Egyptian Revolution: The Politics of Memory and Transmission
11. Sexual Violence, Power, Freedom, and the Emergence of a New Feminist Discourse
12. The Twenty-First-Century Egyptian Women's Prisons Notebooks
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration, Transcription, and Translation
Introduction
Part One. The Long Feminist Century in Egypt
1. Genealogies of Women's Activism
2. The Fight for Women's Bodily Rights: The FGM Task Force
3. Gendered Dimensions of the Post–Cold War Order in Egypt
4. Toward a Women's History of the Human Rights Movement in Egypt
Part Two. Feminist Lives in Egypt
5. Practicing Feminist Psychiatry as Human Rights Activism: Aida Seif El-Dawla, Suzan Fayad, and Magda Adly
6. Conceptualizing Women's Rights within the Family as Human Rights: The Intellectual and Grassroots Work of Azza Soliman
7. Toward an Ethics of Care: The Political Journey of Gameela Ismail
8. Transgenerational Legacies in the Early 2000s Social Movements: Mahienour El-Massry and Sanaʾ al-Masri
Part Three. Toward New Ways of Being, Knowing, and Doing
9. January 25, 2011: A New Feminist Beginning
10. Historicizing the Egyptian Revolution: The Politics of Memory and Transmission
11. Sexual Violence, Power, Freedom, and the Emergence of a New Feminist Discourse
12. The Twenty-First-Century Egyptian Women's Prisons Notebooks
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index