Panel: INTERFAITH DIALOGUE AND COMBATTING INEQUALITY



227_2.6 - OTTOMAN WOMEN'S SOLIDARITY: WRITING AND RESISTANCE BETWEEN AUTHORITARIANISM AND NATIONALISM

AUTHORS:
Kebranian N. (Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna ~ Vienna ~ Austria)
Text:
Studies of Late Ottoman intercommunal and interconfessional relations focus overwhelmingly on male members of the socio-political elite and patriarchally governed institutions. Restricted to specific linguistic or ethno-confessional spheres, the growing historical scholarship on Late Ottoman women's movements and feminism over the past two decades has only marginally addressed women's roles in interreligious dialogue. Yet recent socio-literary findings from Ottoman-Armenian print culture (Kebranian, Zabel Yessayan on the Threshold) reveal the mobilization of a socio-semantic web towards the mutual emancipation and humanitarian support of Muslim and non-Muslim women during a tumultuous period of authoritarianism, pro-democratic revolution, ultra-nationalism, genocide, and diasporic dispersion. This presentation addresses the work - both literary and polemic, social and political - of a leading Ottoman-Armenian woman writer and public figure - Zabel Yessayan - in her continuous efforts to address and redress the intersectional (Kimberlé Crenshaw) experiences of confessionally determined gender inequalities imposed by authoritarian and nationalist systems.