How do social activists use stories about religion and morality to envision change and encourage action, and how are these narratives exchanged across borders in the Middle East? To answer these questions, this study examines Egyptian and Algerian morality tales of the 1940s and 1950s, as printed in the pages of papers like al-Risalah, Afrique-Action, and El Moudjahid. For Egypt, the study explores stories written by Kamil Mahmud Habib, Sayyid Qutb, and 'Ali al-Tantawi, such as “Shaykh in a Dance Club” [Shaykh fi marqas] and “Goddess of the Beach” [Rabbat al-shati']. The presentation also examines Algerian morality tales like “The Mason-Wasp and the Toad” [La Mouche-maçonne et le crapaud], a fable adapted by Algerian writer Kateb Yacine, and the popular legend of Colonel Ben Daoud, cited by North African authors including Nadir Bouzar, Mustapha Bekkouche, and Allal El Fassi. These morality tales can be broadly classified into two types: the fable (which Yacine dubbed “lies, where not everything is false”) and historical myths (“truths, where not everything is true”). As the paper argues, morality tales were an important way for social activists to advocate both prescriptive norms (about what should be done) and proscriptive norms (about what should not be done). Moreover, individuals like Yacine, Bouzar, Qu?b, and ?ab?b used morality tales to provide scripts for action, make arguments about roles and responsibilities, communicate opinions about who was violating and who was upholding the social order, and contest social boundaries. For instance, “Shaykh in a Dance Club” encouraged transgressing established divisions of space, while the legend of Colonel Ben Daoud challenged social hierarchies and assimilationist doctrines in French Algeria. As compact arguments in a memorable and elastic form, these tales traveled well across borders and were flexibly adapted to fit local contexts. "The Mason-Wasp and the Toad," for instance, was a Sudanese fable that traveled to Algeria and was adapted into an anti-colonial tale. Similarly, the story of Ben Daoud was shared in Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco. Thus, morality tales were a useful strategy for Egyptian and Algerian social activists of the 1940s and 1950s. Overall, this finding is important for the study of social movements in the Middle East, in that it should encourage scholars to decenter religion as a unit of analysis, and focus instead on the hybridity of the Arab moral imaginary and the ways norms were actively negotiated and contested between various sites of norm production.

Female-to-Male cross-dressers have a notable history in Iranian cinema, rising during reform eras. The films deploy unique cultural tropes and speak to larger changes in society. While Male-to-Female cross-dressing characters are usually associated with comedic entertainment, criminality, and trickery, Female-to-Male cross-dressers are typically coerced into adapting to another gender identity, often as an act of necessity to gain employment. The films champion women’s rights and problematize the constructs of masculinity. Moreover, given that men have more rights and authority, posing as a man is socially understandable. In this paper, I will compare two popular films from the reform decade of Pahlavi’s “White Revolution”—The Champion of Champions (1965) and Shamsi Pahlevoon (1966)—with two award-winning films from the reform era of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency—Daughters of the Sun (2000) and Baran (2001). I will show how these films mimic two distinct masculine archetypes—jahel and amrad—to expose the strictures of tradition as well as the repression experienced under the patriarchal and class barriers of their transformative times. Before the revolution, female characters changed into the archetypal tough guy (jahel) from the commercial cinema. They don a mustache, a velvet hat, a black suit, and white shirt while speaking and behaving as a macho. In these comedies, the Female-to-Male characters are exaggerated, satirizing masculine identity. They not only transgress gender but also class. They foreground the force of modernity by becoming active agents and pursuing desired partners. Ultimately, these characters return to more passive female roles—reestablishing the primacy of the heteronormative identity. The films end happily with what Afsaneh Najmabadi has called the “marriage imperative” in Iranian society. In post-revolution cinema, crude jahels are no longer permissible role models. The most common Female-to-Male character is derived from the known figure in Persian culture of the amrad, the sensitive young man without facial hair who is beautiful, androgynous, and quiet. Masculinity is not satirized by exaggeration but feminized. This passing character also recalls the idolized self-sacrificing innocent martyr of the Iran-Iraq War. The plight of women and the poor are highlighted in these critical dramas that call for social justice. Yet there are no happy endings, even if the characters return to their female roles. In much the manner of classical Persian poetry, love triggers a character’s internal awakening, but is not consummated.

How do known local “queer” bars and rooftop parties in Beirut, as a set of small specialized for-profit businesses, participate in shaping the gendered and sexual practices of those who frequent them? Some Lebanese activists and international LGBT rights NGOs often see the globalizing LGBT sexual identity categories as reflecting authentic self expressions and innate desires. Thus, the classification of non-normative gendered sexualities into these transnational categories is frequently naturalized, while simultaneously casting other transnational categories such as “Shemale” as politically improper. However, other factors play a significant role in the categorization of non-normative genders and sexualities in Lebanon. One such key factor is a local business deal between several bars in Beirut under which clients are classified into “Gay” and “Shemale” by employing ideas about respectable class and gender self-presentation, which in turn serves to grant or limit their entry. In response, the clients learn the codes of appropriate visibility and negotiate their classed and gendered self-presentation accordingly. In this paper I argue that disregarding this factor and the associated class dynamics of categorizing gendered sexualities reproduces an inadequate account of sexuality politics in Beirut. Rather, considering the process of gendered sexual identity categorization as an interaction between bars and clients reveals a complex set of gendered class dynamics that are integral to the construction of sexual identities and the negotiation of sexuality politics in Beirut today.

My project explores sites of contestation and contamination resulting from Arab queers' adherence to the politics of the Western “closet.” The project examines three historical moments in Arabic literature and culture which articulate differing relationships of same-sex individuals to the concept of the closet: inside the permissive closet, out of the closet, and beyond the closet. Through examining premodern poetry, contemporary novels, plays, films, artistic installations, and virtual blogs, my presentation will highlight the gains and challenges of adopting an international LGBT agenda. It also explores how conflicts in gendered identity have been shaped and sharpened by the politics of authoritarian regimes, civil war, and failed revolutions. I argue that we must shift away from fixed, binary epistemologies of the closet discourse to dynamic models that can accommodate the stretching of the Arab closet borders to accommodate a “coming in” versus a “coming out” discourse, and to capture the Arab queer body’s movements and affects as it performs flexible, intimate models of citizenship and belonging in the era of globalization.