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We discuss the wonderful morning we spent with designer Omer Asim and his collaborator Maya Antoun - looking at their beautiful and inspiring work that unites body and fabric in sensual minimalist forms. See links below. We are going to have a break and will be back in September. Have a great summer! http://www.omer-asim.com https://www.instagram.com/omer_asim https://www.instagram.com/maya.antoun/ Omer Asim, SHOWstudio: https://www.showstudio.com/contributors/omer_asim Jenny Pashkova, ‘Omer Asim', Off Black Magazine (2014): http://offblackmagazine.com/archive/archives/project/omer-asim Helen Jennings, ‘Omer Asim', Nataal (2017): https://nataal.com/omer-asim ‘Omer Asim: The Stealth SuperBrand', because magazine (17 June 2020): https://becauselondon.com/fashion/2020/omer-asim-shining-bright-under-the-radar/ Marie Grace Brown, ‘Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan', Stanford University Press (2017): https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25840 Rebecca Arnold, ‘Vionnet and Classicism', in Vionnet, Judith Clark Costume (15 March – 16 April 2001): https://judithclarkcostume.com/wp-content/uploads/Judith-Clark-16pp-Vionnet.pdf
For those who haven't studied the Middle East, the historical lives of women there can be thought to be a black hole: no information available about those who were thrown under a burkha and locked up at home or in a harem. Never mind that few women wore the clothing of modern-day Saudi Arabia in the past; women had vibrant lives there regardless of social restriction. Even in the harem, ostensibly most restrictive place in the pre-modern Middle East, women ironically could exert more power than anywhere else. In fact, if you wanted to rule an empire through your weak-minded husband or son, there was no better place to be. To discuss these issue I am joined by Marie Grace Brown, professor of history at the University of Kansas. She is a cultural historian of the Modern Middle East with a special interest in questions of gender and empire. Marie does a great job of making academic concepts about Westernization vs. modernization accessible to a non-scholarly audience. But we don't get too scholarly. At one point I ask her how she would take over the Middle East as a woman in the pre-modern world. Her award-winning book, Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017), traces gestures, intimacies, and adornment to give a history of northern Sudanese women’s lives under imperial rule.
Marie Grace Brown's Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan, as well as the story of their bodies and movement. Brown weaves together women's education, women's health, activism and more through the tobe, a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman's head and body. She reads textiles like texts and challenges us to both read existing primary sources differently and seek out new primary sources. Khartoum at Night shows us how the centrality of the tobe shaped everyday life, but how the tobe itself was shaped by continuity and rupture in Sudanese society. What we have as a result is a story that gives agency to its actors and ultimately, the story of imperial Sudan. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan, as well as the story of their bodies and movement. Brown weaves together women’s education, women’s health, activism and more through the tobe, a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman’s head and body. She reads textiles like texts and challenges us to both read existing primary sources differently and seek out new primary sources. Khartoum at Night shows us how the centrality of the tobe shaped everyday life, but how the tobe itself was shaped by continuity and rupture in Sudanese society. What we have as a result is a story that gives agency to its actors and ultimately, the story of imperial Sudan. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan, as well as the story of their bodies and movement. Brown weaves together women’s education, women’s health, activism and more through the tobe, a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman’s head and body. She reads textiles like texts and challenges us to both read existing primary sources differently and seek out new primary sources. Khartoum at Night shows us how the centrality of the tobe shaped everyday life, but how the tobe itself was shaped by continuity and rupture in Sudanese society. What we have as a result is a story that gives agency to its actors and ultimately, the story of imperial Sudan. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan, as well as the story of their bodies and movement. Brown weaves together women’s education, women’s health, activism and more through the tobe, a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman’s head and body. She reads textiles like texts and challenges us to both read existing primary sources differently and seek out new primary sources. Khartoum at Night shows us how the centrality of the tobe shaped everyday life, but how the tobe itself was shaped by continuity and rupture in Sudanese society. What we have as a result is a story that gives agency to its actors and ultimately, the story of imperial Sudan. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan, as well as the story of their bodies and movement. Brown weaves together women’s education, women’s health, activism and more through the tobe, a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman’s head and body. She reads textiles like texts and challenges us to both read existing primary sources differently and seek out new primary sources. Khartoum at Night shows us how the centrality of the tobe shaped everyday life, but how the tobe itself was shaped by continuity and rupture in Sudanese society. What we have as a result is a story that gives agency to its actors and ultimately, the story of imperial Sudan. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan, as well as the story of their bodies and movement. Brown weaves together women’s education, women’s health, activism and more through the tobe, a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman’s head and body. She reads textiles like texts and challenges us to both read existing primary sources differently and seek out new primary sources. Khartoum at Night shows us how the centrality of the tobe shaped everyday life, but how the tobe itself was shaped by continuity and rupture in Sudanese society. What we have as a result is a story that gives agency to its actors and ultimately, the story of imperial Sudan. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan, as well as the story of their bodies and movement. Brown weaves together women’s education, women’s health, activism and more through the tobe, a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman’s head and body. She reads textiles like texts and challenges us to both read existing primary sources differently and seek out new primary sources. Khartoum at Night shows us how the centrality of the tobe shaped everyday life, but how the tobe itself was shaped by continuity and rupture in Sudanese society. What we have as a result is a story that gives agency to its actors and ultimately, the story of imperial Sudan. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices