Reina Lewis

A Reader

Feminist Postcolonial Theory

Elizabeth Wilson

Yasmine Nachabe Taan

"Explores the role of the dressed and undressed body in the making of the modern Middle East, from perspectives such as nation, gender, post-colonialism and historiography"--

Gender, Body, and Nation

Fashioning the Modern Middle East

Rohit K. Dasgupta

Lipi Begum

For South Asia, fashion and consumption have come to play an increasingly important role in the lives of young people and in the formation of youth cultures. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have all, in related and distinctive ways, been producing confident young fashion consumers, who are proving to be an important market for fashion.This book explores South Asian youth cultures and fashion across the countries of this region and their diasporas from a transnational perspective. Through visual and textual analysis of film, photography and digital cultures, as well as ethnographic fieldwork, the expert contributors look at how gender, sexuality, class, the media and faith intersect with and style youth cultures. By establishing the heterogeneous nature of South Asia and its youth cultures, they also dismantle grand western narratives that tend to understand the region's diverse cultural modernity through the lens of homogeneity.

Fashion, Media and Society

Styling South Asian Youth Cultures

In the shops of London's Oxford Street, girls wear patterned scarves over their hair as they cluster around makeup counters. Alongside them, hip twenty-somethings style their head-wraps in high black topknots to match their black boot-cut trousers. Participating in the world of popular mainstream fashion—often thought to be the domain of the West—these young Muslim women are part of an emergent cross-faith transnational youth subculture of modest fashion. In treating hijab and other forms of modest clothing as fashion, Reina Lewis counters the overuse of images of veiled women as "evidence" in the prevalent suggestion that Muslims and Islam are incompatible with Western modernity. Muslim Fashion contextualizes modest wardrobe styling within Islamic and global consumer cultures, interviewing key players including designers, bloggers, shoppers, store clerks, and shop owners. Focusing on Britain, North America, and Turkey, Lewis provides insights into the ways young Muslim women use multiple fashion systems to negotiate religion, identity, and ethnicity.

Contemporary Style Cultures

Muslim Fashion

Jill D'Alessandro

"This lavishly illustrated book presents Muslim fashion as an essential part of contemporary style. This dazzling exploration of contemporary Muslim modest dress, from historic styles to present-day examples, accompanies a major exhibition and reveals the enormous range of self-expression through fashion achieved by Muslim men and women. Filled with documentary and fashion photography as well as stills from runway shows and the media, this book explores the ways Muslim style cultures are shaped by global trends and religious beliefs. From high-end couture to streetwear, this volume shows how established and diaspora regions, such as Dubai, Jakarta, London, and New York, are homes to thriving industries that create classic and cutting-edge looks. Accompanying these images are essays and personal narratives by leading voices that touch on everything from the history of modest dress to social media. A fascinating examination of a major segment of the fashion industry, this book highlights the ingenuity and creativity of Muslim designers and wearers as they deftly navigate the fashion industry while maintaining their religious and cultural identities"--

Contemporary Muslim Fashions

Questioning the Western stereotype about the women of the Muslim harem, the author argues that, whilst Orientalist thinking has been challenged, the Western understanding of Middle Eastern culture remains limited.

Women, Travel, and the Ottoman Harem

Rethinking Orientalism

In contrast to most cultural histories of imperialism, which analyse Orientalist images of rather than by women, Gendering Orientalism focuses on the contributions of women themselves. Drawing on the little-known work of Henriette Browne, other `lost' women Orientlist artists and the literary works of George Eliot, Reina Lewis challenges masculinist assumptions relating to the stability and homogeneity of the Orientalist gaze. Gendering Orientalism argues that women did not have a straightforward access to an implicitly nale position of western superiority, Their relationship to the shifting terms of race, nation and gender produced positions from which women writers and artists could articulate alternative representations of racial difference. It is this different, and often less degrading, gaze on the Orientalized `Other' that is analysed in this book. By revealing the extent of women's involvement in the popular field of visual Orientalism and highlighting the presence of Orientalist themes in the work of Browne, Eliot and Charlotte Bronte, reina Lewis uncovers women's roles in imperial culture and discourse. Gendering Orientalism will appeal to students, lecturers and researchers in cultural studies, literature, art history, women's studies and anthropology.

Race, Femininity and Representation

Gendering Orientalism

Roger Lewis

To what extent did white European women contribute to the imperial cultures of the second half of the nineteenth century?

Sara Mills

The readings have been selected to examine the textual and discursive nature of colonial and post-colonial discourse in relation to gender and the material effects of the post-colonial condition and practices developed in relation to it.

Feminism and postcolonialism are allies, and the impressive selection of writings brought together in this volume demonstrate how fruitful that alliance can be. Reina Lewis and Sara Mills have assembled a brilliant selection of thinkers, organizing them into six categories: "Gendering Colonialism and Postcolonialism/Radicalizing Feminism," "Rethinking Whiteness," "Redefining the 'Third World' Subject," "Sexuality and Sexual Rights," "Harem and the Veil," and "Gender and Post/colonial Relations." A bibliography complements the wide-ranging essays. This is the ideal volume for any reader interested in the development of postcoloniality and feminist thought.

Reina Lewis analyzes Muslim modest clothing as fashion and shows how young Muslim women (with a focus on Britain, North America, and Turkey) are part of an emergent transnational youth subculture who use fashion to negotiate religion, identity, ethnicity, and mainstream consumer culture.

Reina Lewis

Books

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