Kurrasat TLS

Published Papers

Women After the World: Analyzing the Representation of Female Characters in Modern, Mainstream, Post-Apocalyptic Films

By: Ahmed Wael Ghuneim (Cohort 2), 2023

Female representation in film, across different genres and countries, is a topic that has been examined and researched in numerous research papers. Perhaps the most famous paper on female representation in film is Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which defines the term “male gaze” as the objectification of women through the male perspective, and especially the male camera in film. Other researchers have studied the representation of women in f ilm across different cinemas and genres. These studies have explored questions related to gender roles and stereotypes in film, as well as the impact of representation on societal perceptions. The continued interest in representation of women in film emphasizes that there is still a pressing need to delve deeper into the topic, particularly across genres that have been less comprehensively studied, such as the post-apocalyptic genre. This essay aims to expand on the existing literature on female representation, by examining the topic within post-apocalyptic films.

Published in: https://www.westga.edu/assets/english/docs/LURe-fall-2023.pdf

In the Grey Zone: The Invisible Conflict of a Gendered Colonized Mind

By: Mariam Rabah (Cohort 2), 2023

After my relatively short journey studying gender, cultures, and power dynamics, I am writing this paper to encapsulate my internal conflict to identify myself. I am a young Egyptian Muslim woman studying at the American University in Cairo. I am in constant confrontation with my beliefs, values, feelings, and thoughts. Gender, for me, was at first merely how society defined our roles based on biological sex at birth. Now, it has become how the world is structured. Everything is gendered, categorized, and boxed in binary categories. That realization has increased the level of tension I face in defining myself. Religion and traditions also play a role in this tension. I have come to question and critique my beliefs, leaving me in a battle between my mind (knowledge) and soul (belief). Am I conservative or liberal? Modern or traditional? Am I living up to the expectations of society (my privileged society)? All of these are questions I raise without having a clear answer. Moreover, I am directly confessing that I am colonized. Not only do I (among others) validate my existence through Western values, trends, practices, and lifestyle, but I am also colonized by the national state regulating my body and structuring the boxes we should all conform to or be punished. Hence, in an attempt to deconstruct the factors behind the tensions I face as a woman, I am writing this essay to describe how, in a black-and-white world, I am willingly choosing to be in the grey area or, in other words, stand neutral without subscribing to any extremes.

Published in:  https://www.processjmus.org/mariam-rabah-in-the-grey-zone

Gender and Social Media: Delving into Young Adults’ Daily Participation on Facebook Participation on Facebook 

By: Masa Tantawy (Cohort 2), 2023

The consumption of social media has become increasingly popular over the past few years. Social media is a term used to describe various digital platforms and technologies that enable users to share content, engage in communication, collaborate on ideas, and build online communities (Correa et al.,2010; Guadagno, 2012). These online services revolutionised communication, allowing communication with friends and family or any other acquaintances or even strangers (Herring and Kapidizic, 2015). Due to the prevalence of social media, it is crucial to study the role that gender plays in its use. This is because gender constantly shapes who we are, plays a notable role in our daily interactions and communication with ours, and affects our identity. Thus, it will be intriguing to examine whether gender continues to impact one’s offline behaviour like in the real-world. Unlike sex, gender is a social construct that individuals reaffirm via performances that align with cultural norms; these performances may differ based on gender-defined societal expectations, which are not only biological (Emara, 2017). The aim of this study is to understand how the social construction of gender affects and is affected by social media, particularly by tackling social media, Facebook specifically, usage among young adult males and females especially Middle Easterns, and women’s constrained freedom online in the Arab countries.

Published in: https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/csp/vol16/iss1/2/

Ownership of History in the Cleopatra Blackness Debate: Whose feminist icon?

By: Peter Maher Selib (Cohort 2), 2023

The role of gender in shaping family communication patterns and conflict resolution.The recent uproar over Netflix’s production of a docuseries about Cleopatra has raised a debate about race, gender, and the writing of history. Among conflicting charges of “Blackwashing” and “racism”, fundamental questions are being passed over about whose history is being written, to whom does Cleopatra “belong,” and relatedly, for whom is she a feminist icon? This essay will discuss this recent controversy with a particular focus on the representation of history and its audience, especially regarding Afrocentrism as a movement. At the center of this essay is not the truthfulness of the history writing about Cleopatra’s race, but rather the intention of how that narrative is presented. This is especially important as it makes claims to a major source of Egyptian identity and of a historical figure whose biography is important to Egypt’s history and society.

Published in:  https://www.fenjanupenn.com/ownership-of-history-in-the-cleopatra-blackness-debate-whose-feminist-icon/

Women in the Early and Medieval Islamic Economic Arena 

By: Sara Afifi (Cohort 2), 2023

This paper sheds light on women’s economic roles in the early Islamic and medieval periods in Islamic Egypt. This paper explores whether the Quran and hadiths dictate women stay at home and not work, the extent to which Islam relegates women to stay at home, and obey their husbands, and what Islamic jurisprudence says about women in the economic arena. To answer these questions, three sections were developed: how the Quran views women’s roles, what Fiqh manuals say about women and work, and lastly, what the lived reality of women reveals about this subject. I conduct my analysis by examining different non-traditional sources,  as they do not belong to a certain author or a particular historian and allow for direct engagement with the data of the sources. These sources are the Geniza and Arabic Papyri documents, as they provide the reader with an image of gender relations in early Islamic and medieval societies. I first conclude that the Quran does not circumscribe women from working, nor does it contain any verses that oblige Muslim women to stay at home. Second, I found that Fiqh rulings on women and work were extremely strict, focusing on the seclusion of women. Lastly, through non-conventional sources, I determine that medieval women indeed worked, had an economic presence, and played an integral part in the Islamic world.

Published in: https://afkarjournal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/afifi_women-in-the-early-and-medieval-islamic-economic-arena.pdf

Climate Change and Gender Inequality

By: Omar Basyouny (Cohort 2), 2022

In an effort to help address one of the major issues the world is facing today, this paper attempts to find climate change mitigation strategies which we can develop to limit climate change and reduce our carbon footprint, through addressing gender inequality, another prominent global issue. Factors such as excessive carbon emission, inadequate management of natural resources, and limited utilization of renewable energy significantly contribute to the exacerbation of climate change, which can lead to multiple impacts including but not limited to droughts, floods, and deforestation. These repercussions not only extend to the economic sphere leading to job losses, reduced income, and scarcity of natural resources but has huge hidden effects on our society in multiple ways, such as sexual violence, human trafficking, child marriage, and most importantly gender inequality. Accordingly, addressing gender inequality can have the potential of benefiting the society as a whole by, for example, improving women’s education, economically empowering them while increasing their decision making sphere, and allowing for greater policy influence. This in turn can lead to significant reduction in climate change through enabling educated women to gain increased awareness of the importance of addressing the climate catastrophe, become more attuned to the importance of protecting natural resources, and utilize influential roles that can shape strategies for combating climate change. In essence, findings prove that by comprehending the consequences of climate change on gender disparities and recognizing the potential of reducing gender inequality to combat climate change, we can be able to gain insights into effective strategies for addressing these intertwined challenges as each of these significant global issues becomes vital in helping us effectively address the other.

Published in: https://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/intersect/article/view/2545