New Books In Middle Eastern Studies

Modeled on Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Bad Girls of the Arab World (University of Texas Press, 2017), edited by Nadia Yaqub and the late Rula Quawas stands apart from the edited volume crowd. It includes, not only academic entries, but personal essays and reflections on art by their artists, all centered on the theme of transgression, or to put it in the language of Bad Girls of the Arab World itself, bad girls. And there is no one bad girl. Some bad girls of the Arab world use their linguistic and cultural heritage to empower them, some rail against them. Some ally themselves with the West, some don’t think about the West and the East as binaries, but rather, apply a complicated, nuanced worldview to their universes. However, all are allotted their agency. Bad Girls of the Arab World will be a resource for students of the Middle East and the general public on gender and the Arab world. Nadia Yaqub is an associate professor at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of North Caro