Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, History

This dissertation comparatively analyzes the role of Islam, secularism and reform in the development of feminism in Egypt and Turkey in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Based on two years of archival research in Turkey, Egypt, and the United Kingdom, my work establishes a dialogue between Turkish and Egyptian feminisms, compares secular and Islamic trends within them, and takes stock of their interactions with and resistances to western feminisms. As the modern period opened, what are now Turkey and Egypt were still parts of the multiethnic Ottoman Empire. The main center of Turkish-language cultural production was Istanbul, and the main center of Arabic-language cultural production was Cairo. The feminist movements of the region developed accordingly. I argue that in Turkey, feminist endeavors gradually carved out a congenial secular space—bypassing religion, or at least loosening the rigid understandings of Islam—where older traditions and more modern structures continued to coexist but with little connection between them. In contrast, Egyptian feminists' modes of approach and analysis tended to conform to traditional and legalistic norms that governed the discussion of the women's role in society. Although Egyptian feminist thought expanded with concepts like humanism and secularism, these concepts were constantly and carefully modulated with a native, vernacular, Islamic discourse. The material that I present in this dissertation suggests that in societies with a strong heritage of secular liberal reform, wherein progressive tradition is engineered by intellectual and official cadres, such as in the Ottoman center and in the Turkish Republic, feminism becomes a state-centric political project and an intellectual exercise in which more conservative manifestations of feminism are side-lined for the sake of a swift rate of progress. But in societies with a strong heritage of Islamically grounded modernization and social advances, such as in Eg (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Carter Vaughn Findley (Advisor) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; History; Islamic Studies; Middle Eastern History; Middle Eastern Studies; Religion; Religious History; Womens Studies