'Women and the Media in Jordan' Book Launch

GENDER.ED and Islamic and Middle eastern Studies invite you to a book launch and discussion of “Women and the Media in Jordan: Gender, Power, Resistance” by Dr. Ebtihal Mahadeen (IMES).

The book provides a feminist, critical study of how gender power relations are played out through and across multiple mediated arenas in the contemporary Middle East, with Jordan as its case study. It examines the dynamic relationship between women and the media as it manifests at three key levels: labour, representation, and activism.

In this talk, Dr. Mahadeen will outline the key contributions of the work and will be joined in discussion by Professor Mary Holmes (University of Edinburgh) and Dr. Sara Ababneh (University of Sheffield).

The discussion will be followed by a reception.

Register for tickets here.

Speaker bios:

Dr. Ebtihal Mahadeen is Lecturer in Gender and Media Studies at the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. Her research addresses the interaction between gender, sexuality, and the media within the Jordanian context/Middle East region. She has published extensively on the gendered politics of culture, mediated femininities and masculinities, and the media as sites of hegemony and resistance. She has a professional background in reporting and online media, and has continued to cultivate a practice-led, not just academic, relationship with the media through various roles including Chief Editor of Jeem.me platform (specialising in producing Arabic-language content on gender and sexuality) and writing op-eds for various media outlets including The New Arab, 7iber, and Middle East Eye.

Prof. Mary Holmes is Professor of Emotions and Society at the Department of Sociology, University of Edinburgh. Her work hinges around the sociology of emotions, symbolic interactionist and feminist approaches applied to the consideration of reflexivity, inequality, subversion and resistance. Prof. Holmes is one of the founding editors of the journal Emotions and Society and she has recently done collaborative research on internet dating and also on the emotional lives of young displaced Syrians and Iraqis in Beirut.

Dr. Sara Ababneh is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Prior to that she was an Associate Professor and the Head of the Political and Social Research Unit at the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. Ababneh earned her DPhil in Politics and International Relations from St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She wrote her dissertation on female Islamists in Hamas in occupied Palestine and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan. Ababneh was selected as the Carnegie Centennial Fellow at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University in New York. She also was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Tübingen. Ababneh has conducted research on Mandate Palestine, gender and Islamism, Muslim family laws, and labor movements. Her research interests include class, gender and struggles for liberation, social justice, post-colonial and feminist IR theory, and economic sovereignty. Currently, Ababneh studies the popular Jordanian protest movement (al-Hirak al-Sha‘bi al-Urduni).