@article{TEXTUAL,
      recid = {1250},
      author = {Ghersetti, Antonella},
      title = {Representations of Women in the Mamluk Period},
      publisher = {The Middle East Documentation Center (MEDOC)},
      journal = {Mamlūk Studies Review},
      address = {2018},
      number = {TEXTUAL},
      pages = {vii-xi},
      abstract = {In the pre-modern Arab-Islamic world the act of writing  significantly contributed to establishing and perpetuating  a culture of gender, especially perspicuous in images and  representations of women and men found in texts where  stereotyped physical and moral features are portrayed.  Gender relationships find their place particularly in what  we could define as normative literature on sex and marriage  (adab al-nikāḥ), but also in works of a wider scope (e.g.,  adab anthologies) that directly or indirectly describe  interpersonal relationships. From idealization of the  perfect wife to demonization of the cunning and ugly woman,  passing through images of women being at the service of  men’s pleasure, women’s representations in the literary  production generally seem to be the result of a dominant,  masculine voice and the expression of men’s interests,  mainly focused on the feminine body and personality as  serviceable commodities. The panel “Representations of  Women in the Mamluk period,” presented at the Second  Conference of the School of Mamlūk Studies (Liège, June  25–27, 2015), was conceived as a way of investigating  representations of women in the textual production of the  Mamluk period, aiming at better understanding gender  relations in Mamluk society. The four papers of the panel  are now published in this themed issue of MSR; the addition  of a fifth article, stretching to the early Ottoman period,  nicely complements the original group and shows  transitional processes and the persistence of Mamluk  elements in that time.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1250},
}