"Women's Autobiographical Writing: Writing What Cannot be Said" In the past three decades women's autobiographical writing has provided a space for the study of processes of women's subject formation and agency. This genre has allowed formerly invisible subjects to be written back into history. Women's everyday lives and struggles, women's voices were brought back into dominant narratives through women's life stories. Published in 2004, Anneannem, a brief memoir by Fethiye Cetin is the story of her Armenian grandmother who was snatched from her mother's arms in 1915 while on the forced march from Anatolia to what is today Syria. Given a new name, the young girl was raised as a Turkish Muslim and only revealed her identity to her granddaughter on her deathbed. Her grandmother's revelation also had an impact on the author's view of herself and her place in society. The narrative which the author says is not intended to be political but to transform what happened then into "human proportions," contradicts the official Turkish account of what happened in Anatolia in that time period and puts into words many unspeakable acts, such as mothers drowning their children before committing suicide themselves. Anneannem also writes back into history the Armenian children called "leftovers of the sword" whose descendants are still living in Turkey today. Writing this book allows the author to explore her own heritage, Turkish society, to write back into history her Armienian ancestors and her Armenian cousins. Both the author and the subject of the book are courageous, brave women, one who survived the "unspeakable," and the other who put the "unspeakable" into words. They are excellent subjects for a panel honoring Elizabeth Fernea, whose work often honored women who exhibited agency and who put into words subjects that were considered taboo by many.

Professor Turkan Saylan (1935-2009) lived a remarkable life. As a doctor she fought against the disease and the stigma of leprosy. As a woman she fought against prejudice, discrimination, and the daily toll of patriarchal hierarchy. As a secular intellectual, educator and feminist activist she fought against ignorance, the system of oppression developing under Islamist political arrangements permeating from political structures to everyday life. She established the secularist "Association for the Support of Contemporary Living" to provide educational grants for poor children, especially girls. In 2009, while being treated for breast cancer, she was arrested for conspiracy in a supposed plot against the Islamist AKP administration, known as "Ergenekon." Public outrage eventually led the government to release her, but Professor Saylan died shortly thereafter. She told her doctors in her last hours "I have done my duty, and I am ready to die." She saw her duty as struggling for women's emancipation in Turkey, a movement dating back to the 19th century. By examining her life and writings, and the historical and political context of her work, this paper is a case study of Turkish women's struggle for emancipation and equality in the Turkish Republic.

The recent demonstrations and vocal protests in the streets of Tehran, did not begin with the June 2009 Iranian presidential elections; they began three decades earlier when the newly established Islamic Republic passed new penal codes that deemed a woman's life was worth half of man's in the eyes of the law. The passage of this law launched the journey of 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winning-lawyer Shirin Ebadi in her struggle to defend women's rights and helped to establish her as one of the founders of Iran's pro-democracy reform movement. This paper focuses on the role of Iranian women in the recent one million signatures campaign and the particular contribution of Shirin Ebadi's work both in human rights and women's rights in the struggle for reform in the Islamic Republic. This paper identifies both Ebadi's recent work defending a series of human rights cases as well as her role in campaigning for reforms that led up to the recent "Green Movement." This paper also highlights recent attempts by the Islamic Republic to threaten and harass Ebadi, including making it impossible for her to safely return from Europe to Iran since the June presidential elections.

The saying "An uneducated woman is the weak link between a family and nation" is attributed to Queen Effat al Thunayyan wife of the late King Feisal of Saudi Arabia. Their names have been associated with the beginnings of women's education in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s and 1960s. Arriving from cosmopolitan Istanbul to a newly formed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the early 1930s, Effat al Thunayyan(of Saudi Circassian lineage)married Prince Feisal in 1930 and settled in the Kingdom. She opened the first girl's school in Jeddah in 1955 and with King Feisal spearheaded major efforts in the education of women from primary to university education and paved the way that has allowed for the current project of the largest women's university in the world. The Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman University which when complete by the end of 2010 will accommodate 44,000 female students. The Kingdom's commitment to education is underscored in its allocation of twenty-five percent of total expenditures of the 2009/2010 national budget. Unlike the early schools which aimed at eradicating illiteracy among women, today's education system is training women to enter the workforce in occupations that were previously considered "unsuitable" for women, such as engineering, architecture and law. This will have significant implications for the public role of women who form a meager 16% of the work force despite equal numbers of male and female university graduates. The government's licensing of the first private women's colleges in 1999 and their adoption of American based educational programs are major changes in a system that has been hitherto supervised by the conservative male religious establishment. The inauguration in November 2009 of KAUST (King Abdullah University for Science and Technology) represented a turning point as the first Saudi co-educational institution in the country. Decades ago Queen Effat (with her husband's support) challenged the Conservative population and religious establishment by opening the first school for girls. Today the boundaries are being pushed again beyond literacy requirements to address the needs of the market and the issue of integrating women into the workforce in a country with the lowest female employment level in the world. Based on original research, including interviews with close associates of the late Queen, my paper will examine the origins, development and transformation of women's education in the Saudi Kingdom and the dynamics of change in a society where gender roles are constrained by culture and tradition.