I am a PhD candidate at the Berlin Graduate School for Muslim Cultures and Societies at Freie Universität Berlin. I hold a B.A. in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from the University of Bern and an M.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Leipzig. My PhD project examines the social history of early twentieth-century women’s periodicals published in Bilād al-Shām and allows me to pursue my broader research interests in Arab print culture, women’s and feminist literature, and the intellectual and social history of the Nahḍa and post-Nahḍa.

Research Project 

My project traces the social history of women’s periodicals published between Beirut and Homs from 1909 to 1939. I approach their history as a collective one, as these periodicals were formative to a moment of increased feminist organizing that brought together upper-class and, increasingly, middle-class women in Bilād al-Shām, before the mass mobilization of the women’s movement in the 1940s. I investigate how these periodicals conceptualized social collectives and how these understandings were reflected within and beyond the material space of the periodical. Combining network analysis and conceptual history, and drawing on a large corpus of periodicals, memoirs, and archival sources, my research shows how women’s periodicals put multiple and fluid social collectives up for discussion while simultaneously positioning themselves as part of them. Editors, writers, and readers contributed to debates around women’s positions in society against the backdrop of imperial rule and changing gender and class relations. At the same time, I examine women’s periodicals beyond theory, asking to what extent and in what ways they offered women viable forms of organizing. My dissertation contributes to growing bodies of work that place Arab women as social theorists and tell a history of Nahḍawi print culture beyond the predominant nationalist frame.