Veiled figures : women, modernity, and the spectres of orientalism /

Heffernan, Teresa, 1962-

Veiled figures : women, modernity, and the spectres of orientalism / Teresa Heffernan. - Toronto : University Of Toronto Press, (c)2016. - 1 online resource (xiii, 202 pages) : illustrations

Includes bibliographies and index.

Islam, the Enlightenment, and the veil -- The great whore of Babylon: cosmopolitanism and racialized nationalism -- Two western women venture east: Lady Annie Brassey and Anna Bowman Dodd -- The Great War and its aftermath: militarized citizens, (un)veiled bodies, and the nation -- The burqa and the bikini: veiling and unveiling at the turn of the twenty-first century.

"In Veiled Figures, Teresa Heffernan explores how the clash of civilizations is perpetuated by the rhetoric of veiling and unveiling. Drawing on travel narratives, harem literature, and other stories, Heffernan argues that women's bodies have been used to exacerbate the divide between religion and reason in the eighteenth century, the Islamic umma and the Western nation in the nineteenth, and Islamism and global capitalism in the contemporary period. Through the study of the writings of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Anna Bowman Dodd, Demetra Vaka Brown, Zeyneb Hanoum, and others, Heffernan's book demonstrates the ways in which these works complicate and interrupt these divides, opening up new opportunities for a more constructive dialogue between East and West."--



9781442624917 9781442637238

20159087759


Veils in literature.
Veils--Social aspects.
Veils--History.
Muslim women in literature.
Islamic literature--Christian interpretations.
Travel writing--History and criticism.
Women travelers--History.--Middle East


Electronic Books.

PN56 / .V455 2016