Amy Aisen Kallander

Amy Kallander is a historian of the early modern and modern Middle East and affiliated faculty with Women’s and Gender Studies. Her current research, "Tunisia’s Modern Woman: Nation-Building and State Feminism in the Global 1960s" (Cambridge University Press, 2021) explores the importance of modern womanhood and women to postcolonial state and society. Considering Cold War alliances, family planning, feminist academics, fashion and love, this book traces state feminism into domestic and international politics, economic development, intellectual conversations, cultural expressions and social shifts during an era of radical political change and women’s rights activism across the Middle East.

Her first book, "Women, Gender, and the Palace Households in Ottoman Tunisia" (University of Texas Press, 2013) is a social history of women and the family that governed Tunisia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her writing on modern Tunisia has appeared in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Report Online, Arab Media & Society, and Nouri Gana ed. "The Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects" (Edinburgh University Press 2013).

Kallander teaches courses on the Ottoman Empire and modern Middle East, the Arab Revolutions, popular culture, women and gender in Middle East history, Palestine and Israel, and gender and race in European colonial empires.

Modern Middle East and North Africa, Ottoman Empire, women and gender, Tunisia, French and French Empire, colonialism

NEH Summer Stipend, 2015
Syracuse University Humanities Center Faculty Fellow, spring 2012
Fullbright CASA III Fellow, Cairo, June - July 2009
Sultan Fellow, UC Berkeley, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, September 2006 – June 2007
Chancellor’s Dissertation Fellowship, UC Berkeley Graduate Division, September 2006 – June 2007
American Institute for Maghreb Studies (AIMS), short-term research grant, June - July 2006
Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship, UC Berkeley, September 2005 – June 2006
Fulbright Fellowship, September 2004 – May 2005
Department of Education, FLAS Fellowship, Arabic, Summer 2004
Department of Education, FLAS Fellowship, Arabic, September 2003 – June 2004

Books

Tunisia’s Modern Woman: Nation-Building and State Feminism in the Global 1960s (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Women, gender, and the palace households in Ottoman Tunisia (University of Texas Press, 2013).

Articles and Book Chapters

“Transnational Intimacies and the Construction of the New Nation: Tunisia and France in the 1960s,” French Politics, Culture, and Society 39:1 (Spring 2021): 109-132

“Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Middle East, 1400-1750)” in Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Teresa Meade eds., Companion to Global Gender History 2^ND Edition, Wiley Blackwell (2021).

Miniskirts and “Beatniks”: Gender Roles, National Development, and Morals in 1960s Tunisia. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 50:2 (2018), 291-313

"'Friends of Tunisia': French economic and diplomatic support of Tunisian authoritarianism," in Nouri Gana ed. The Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects. Edinburgh University Press (2013).

“From TUNeZINE to Nhar 3la 3mmar: A Reconsideration of the Role of Bloggers in Tunisia’s Revolution” Arab, Media, and Society 17 (Winter 2013).

“Tunisia’s Post-Ben Ali Challenge: A Primer” in David McMurray and Amanda Ufheil-Somers eds. The Arab Revolts: Dispatches on Militant Democracy in the Middle East (Indiana University Press, 2013). Updated and revised from the Middle East Report Online 26 January 2011.

"The Color of Orientalism: Race and Narratives of Discovery in Tunisia," Ethnic and Racial Studies 33:2 (February 2010).