Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500 1900

Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500 1900 Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse Dror Ze’evi in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500–1900 Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006 xv + 171 pp., $60.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper) Producing Desire is an exciting new contribution to the growing discourse on gender and sexuality in Islamic societies. Rather than take the lead from work done in the European context, Dror Ze’evi has demonstrated the need to chart a unique course. Although the author delineates 1500–1900 as the focus of his study, his span is much larger and encompasses medical and legal works dating back to the Abbasid period, some of which are based on earlier works. One might be inclined to question why Ze’evi did not take a narrower focus, but as the work emerges it is clear that views toward sexuality and homoeroticism change and viewing one set of texts or category of texts could prove misleading. Ze’evi marshals an impressive array of sources including medical treatises, legal codes, Sufi poetry, rants against Sufi poetry, literature on dream interpretation, shadow plays, and travelogues. The broad spectrum of Ottoman/ Islamic literature presents a different dynamic than the polarities of male/female, homosexual/ heterosexual found in the Western understanding of gender and http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East Duke University Press

Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500 1900

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/producing-desire-changing-sexual-discourse-in-the-ottoman-middle-east-ls32HJGbOp

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
© 2007 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1089-201X
eISSN
1089-201X
DOI
10.1215/1089201x-2007-044
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse Dror Ze’evi in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500–1900 Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006 xv + 171 pp., $60.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper) Producing Desire is an exciting new contribution to the growing discourse on gender and sexuality in Islamic societies. Rather than take the lead from work done in the European context, Dror Ze’evi has demonstrated the need to chart a unique course. Although the author delineates 1500–1900 as the focus of his study, his span is much larger and encompasses medical and legal works dating back to the Abbasid period, some of which are based on earlier works. One might be inclined to question why Ze’evi did not take a narrower focus, but as the work emerges it is clear that views toward sexuality and homoeroticism change and viewing one set of texts or category of texts could prove misleading. Ze’evi marshals an impressive array of sources including medical treatises, legal codes, Sufi poetry, rants against Sufi poetry, literature on dream interpretation, shadow plays, and travelogues. The broad spectrum of Ottoman/ Islamic literature presents a different dynamic than the polarities of male/female, homosexual/ heterosexual found in the Western understanding of gender and

Journal

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle EastDuke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2007

There are no references for this article.