During the nineteenth century, the figure of the passive, oppressed, yet highly sexualized female of the Muslim harem became the pivotal figure of Western Orientals. Despite recent challenges to orientalist thinking, however, an enduring mystique continues to surround Western perceptions of Eastern women. In Rethinking Orientalism, Reina Lewis makes a major contribution to correcting the prevailing stereotype of the subjugated, silenced woman of the harem. Bringing together published autobiographical accounts of self-identified "Oriental" women at the turn of the twentieth century, she reveals that these women were, in fact, able to intervene in orientalist culture and manipulate cultural codes. Lewis shows how the writings of Demetra Vaka Brown, Halide Edib, Zeyneb Hanum, Melek Hanum, and Grace Ellison were part of a social and textual dialogue with Western women, and how their contentious engagement with Western feminism was an important facet of regional modernization. Exploring the complicated ways that these writers addressed topics such as seclusion, the veil, and polygamy, Lewis vividly illustrates the possibilities and limitations of resistance that women from Islamic societies have experienced and continue to work within.

List of Illustrations
Note on Language
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One. Harem Travellers
Chapter Two. Empire, Nation and Culture
Chapter Three. Harem: The Limits of Emancipation
Chapter Four. Eroticised Bodies: Representing Other Women
Chapter Five. Contested Behaviours, Gendered Spaces
Chapter Six. Dress Acts: The Shifting Significance of Clothes
Conclusion: Commodofication, Time and Nostalgia: The Search for Authenticity
Bibliography
Index

Reina Lewis is senior lecturer in cultural studies at the University of East London. She is the author of Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, and Representation and coeditor of Feminist Postcolonial Theory. With Nancy Micklewright, she is editing Gender, Modernity and Liberty: Middle Eastern and Western Feminisms, A Critical Reader.