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Gender Lecture SoSe 2026: The Entanglements of Feminism and Nationalism in the Middle East and North Africa

Gender Lecture SoSe 2026

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Abstract

Feminist movements in the Middle East and North Africa have long been entangled with nationalist projects. From anti-colonial struggles to contemporary movements, women have been mobilized as symbolic bearers of the nation: guardians of culture, morality, and demographic continuity. Meanwhile feminist actors have drawn on nationalist frameworks to advance claims for rights, recognition, and political participation. These dynamics have produced both opportunities and constraints, as feminist agendas are alternately incorporated into nationalist narratives, marginalized within them, or mobilized to challenge them.

This lecture examines these tensions from a comparative perspective across the region. Drawing on examples from anti-colonial mobilizations, state-led gender reforms, and more recent feminist activism, it explores how feminist actors strategically engage with nationalist discourses while also contesting their exclusions, particularly in relation to militarism, patriarchal citizenship regimes, and the instrumentalization of women’s rights. Situating these dynamics within the current rise of authoritarianism, right-wing populism, and transnational anti-gender politics, the lecture argues that the relationship between feminism and nationalism cannot be understood simply in terms of co-optation or resistance. Rather, it must be seen as a shifting and contested terrain in which feminist actors continuously negotiate political belonging, rights, and visions of more just futures.

Bio

Nadje Al-Ali is Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilization, mainly with reference to Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish political movement. Her publications include *What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq *(2009, University of California Press, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); *Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives* (Zed Books, 2009, co-edited with Nicola Pratt); *Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present* (2007, Zed Books), *and Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East* (Cambridge University Press 2000). Her co-edited book with Deborah al-Najjar entitled *We are Iraqis: Aesthetics & Politics in a Time of War* (Syracuse University Press) won the 2014 Arab-American book prize for non-fiction. More recent publications include (jointly with Deniz Kandiyoti and Kathryn Spellman Poots) *Gender, Governance & Islam* (University of Edinburgh Press, 2019) and *Resisting Far-Right Politics in the Middle East and Europe: Queer Feminist Critiques *(ed. With Tunay Altay and Katharina Galor, University of Edinburgh Press, 2024).

References 

Yuval‐Davis, N. (1993). Gender and nation. *Ethnic and Racial Studies*, *16*(4), 621–632. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1993.9993800

Kandiyoti, D. (1991). Identity and its Discontents: Women and the Nation. *Millennium: Journal of International Studies*, *20*(3), 429-443.

Al-Ali, Nadje & Nicola, Pratt, . (2011). Between nationalism and women's rights: The Kurdish women's movement in Iraq. *Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication*, *4*(3), 339-355

Al-Ali, Nadje & Latif Tas (2018) 2018.  ‘Reconsidering Nationalism and Feminism: The Kurdish Political Movement in Turkey’, in *Nations & Nationalism *24 (2): 453-473.