The King who would be Man: the Gender Roles of the Warrior King in Early Mughal History

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALI ANOOSHAHR

There has appeared a new trend in recent scholarship on the early modern Islamic world that analyzes the role of gender and sexuality in society and culture. Ruby Lal and Rosalind O'Hanlon have investigated women and gender roles in the sixteenth-century Mughal harem and the broader imperial court respectively. Mehmed Kalpaklı, Walter Andrews, and Khaled El-Rouayheb have studied the nature or the implications of sexual relationship among men in Istanbul as well as the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi have read Safavid and Qajar literature and visual arts through the lens of gender and power politics. Together these scholars have successfully highlighted the relevance of this methodology particularly in its application to the narrative sources that comprise the bulk of our documentations for the period (except for the Ottoman case of course), and it is to subject to such an approach a brief, but crucial, period in early Mughal history and historiography that the present article now proceeds.

Author(s):  
Judith Herrin

This book explores the exceptional roles that women played in the vibrant cultural and political life of medieval Byzantium. This book evokes the complex and exotic world of Byzantium's women, from empresses and saints to uneducated rural widows. Drawing on a diverse range of sources, the book sheds light on the importance of marriage in imperial statecraft, the tense coexistence of empresses in the imperial court, and the critical relationships of mothers and daughters. It looks at women's interactions with eunuchs, the in-between gender in Byzantine society, and shows how women defended their rights to hold land. The book describes how women controlled their inheritances, participated in urban crowds demanding the dismissal of corrupt officials, followed the processions of holy icons and relics, and marked religious feasts with liturgical celebrations, market activity, and holiday pleasures. The vivid portraits that emerge here reveal how women exerted an unrivalled influence on the patriarchal society of Byzantium, and remained active participants in the many changes that occurred throughout the empire's millennial history. The book brings together the author's finest essays on women and gender written throughout the long span of her career. This volume includes three new essays published here for the very first time and a new general introduction. It also provides a concise introduction to each essay that describes how it came to be written and how it fits into her broader views about women and Byzantium.


Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 694-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild

This paper argues for greater integration of considerations of women and gender in the history of the 1917 Russian Revolutions. Two key issues have long been discussed by historians: the spontaneity/consciousness paradigm, and the role of class in the revolution. Neither has been adequately analyzed in relation to gender. Women's suffrage has been largely neglected despite the fact that it was a significant issue throughout the year and represented a pioneering advance won by a countrywide coalition of women and men from the working class and intelligentsia, and from almost all political parties. In this centennial year, accounts of the Revolution remain one-dimensional; women remain the other.


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thuc-Doan T. Nguyen ◽  
Russell Belk

This article examines the historical role of marriage and wedding rituals in Vietnam, and how they have changed during Vietnam’s transition to the market. The authors focus on how changes reflect the society’s increasing dependence on the market, how this dependence impacts consumer well-being, and the resulting implications for public policy. Changes in the meanings, function, and structure of wedding ritual consumption are examined. These changes echo shifts in the national economy, social values, social relations, and gender roles in Vietnamese society during the transition. The major findings show that Vietnamese weddings are reflections of (1) the roles of wedding rituals as both antecedents and outcomes of social changes, (2) the nation’s perception and imagination of its condition relative to “modernity,” and (3) the role of China as a threatening “other” seen as impeding Vietnam’s progress toward “modernization.”


2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Bright

Abstract This essay examines contemporary Tibetan medical literature that deals with menstruation, focusing on the relations among medical, religious and cultural perceptions of women and gender. Present-day medical writers present a hybrid account of menstruation, incorporating key aspects of Tibetan medicine, such as the refining processes of digestion and the red element, with biomedical knowledge, notably the role of hormones. The integration of biomedical thought by Tibetan writers works to substantiate and bolster the validity of Tibetan medical claims, rather than discredit them. Consequently, contemporary writers are able to articulate medical knowledge about women that is as much about Tibetan religious and cultural perceptions of gender and sexed-bodies, as it is ‘scientific’.


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