<p> This dissertation examines the civic experiences of women before, during and after the January 25, 2011 Uprising in Egypt in an attempt to explore this group's perception of what encouraged or discouraged them from engaging civically. Two questions guide this investigation. How do Egyptian women with a social studies background narrate their civic experiences before, during and after the January 25 Uprising? And to what extent have the K-12 citizenship education and related policies impacted the civic engagement of these future teachers before, during and after the Uprising? </p><p> Inspired by the works of Dewey, Freire and hook, this study views education as key in developing engaged citizens. Schools represent the society and are responsible for cultivating future generations. The experiences students have influences their knowledge and attitudes as citizens. This study traces the impact of education, school environment, and the society in general on empowering women to have a voice, engage in the community, and make political choices. </p><p> Data were collected in Egypt in 2013 amid much instability but at a time when Egyptians had to put their civic duty first and make many political choices. Twenty-two women took part in face-to-face semi-structured interviews. The participant pool included teachers of social studies, graduate students of social studies education or history, and undergraduate students majoring in a social studies related field. Additional sources of data included, non-participant observations, document analysis, and field notes. </p><p> Using grounded theory to analyze and interpret the data; findings reveal that societal norms and school practices have limited the participants' choices and led the women to believe that their voices were silenced. However, the data also reflects strong human agency that the women exhibited consciously and unconsciously. Through intensive fieldwork, this dissertation sets the groundwork for future studies targeting education and women in the Middle East. It offers intellectual space for a much-needed conversation on educational policies, citizenship education, democracy, and women status in the Middle East.</p>

<p> This study explored female refugees&rsquo; perceptions and life experiences at the Za&rsquo;atari Camp in Jordan. While the study explored challenges and difficulties refugee women have endured while living in the camp, emphasis was placed on how they faced these challenges, coping mechanisms used for overcoming and enduring such circumstances, and what new life roles they had to assume. Utilizing Schweitzer, Greenslade, and Kagee&rsquo;s (2007) model, this study explored, through qualitative phenomenological methods, the tenacity, resilience, and strength that empowered refugee women throughout their experiences in the camp. In-depth interviews were the main method of data collection. Forty-three face-to-face interviews were conducted on camp premises during the summer of 2015. The data was analyzed according to the Interpretive Phenomenological Analytic (IPA) guidelines.</p><p> The findings of this study revealed the female refugees of the Za&rsquo;atari Camp were not passive in dealing with their adversities. They showed resilience, tenacity, and resourcefulness when coping with life in the settlement. Their resilience is seen through their determination to provide for their families and normalize their lives inside the camp. Additionally, female refugees employed different coping mechanisms for maintaining their psychological well-being such as religiosity, seeking social support and networking, and self-empowerment. </p><p> The findings also indicated children&rsquo;s education in the camp continues to be an area of concern for a majority of refugees despite their understanding of the importance of education for their children&rsquo;s survival. Due to the widespread notion the camp&rsquo;s education was not accredited in Syria, and their beliefs of the temporariness of their encampment, children were left to their own accord in deciding whether to attend school or not.</p><p> The results of this study challenged the &ldquo;Dependency Syndrome&rdquo; myth which postulate refugees tend to become dependent on humanitarian aid and unable to fend for themselves. On the contrary, many become strong, independent and assertive. In the end, they came to see themselves differently which brought a new level of understanding of themselves and their abilities.</p>

<p> In the last decade, theorists in anthropology and other disciplines have vigorously critiqued commonplace distinctions between secularism and religion. Highlighting how secularism is a form of Western epistemology, such theorists have argued this distinction is deeply problematic because it obscures secularism&rsquo;s historical, political, and cultural particularity. </p><p> My dissertation argues Iran is well situated to engage in this debate because its political terrain brings into relief how discussions of secularity and religiosity often fall back on an irresolvable dichotomy wherein secularism is defended without qualification or religious authoritarianism is ignored altogether. In an effort to move out of this impasse, my dissertation critiques the presumed neutrality of secularism without defending a thoroughly undemocratic Islamic Republic.</p><p> Through an examination of three sites within Iranian politics since 1979, I show how alternatives to both secularism and undemocratic forms of Islam are already present in Iran. The first site that I explore is the contemporary Iranian women&rsquo;s movement, specifically the One Million Signatures Campaign, which seeks full gender equality within the laws of the Islamic Republic. I argue that the internal logic of rights and a specific set of socio-political conditions that arose out of the revolution in 1979 made the newly fostered cooperation between Islamic and secular feminists within this campaign possible. Utilizing critiques of rights by poststructuralist and postcolonial feminists, I arrive at a critical endorsement of women&rsquo;s rights in Iran that calls for nurturing more radical political imaginaries by not treating rights jurisprudence as the apex of social justice struggles.</p><p> My second site focuses on the politics of time and its role in the 2009 post-election uprising as a further example of the porous boundary between secularism and religion in Iran. After surveying the history of Iran&rsquo;s three dominant calendars and the forty-day mourning cycle of Shi&rsquo;ite Islam in the last century, I argue the Islamic Republic is founded on temporal simultaneity, a non-secular organization of time wherein past, present, and future are enfolded into one dynamic moment. I conclude that during the 2009 uprising, protesters initiated a crisis of legitimacy for the regime by reconfiguring temporal markers that comprise this symbolic foundation of the contemporary Iranian state.</p><p> My final site is the visual culture in the Islamic Republic as well as Western understandings and depictions of it. I argue such analyses of artistic production in Iran by Western observers rely on a particular understanding of the state, religion, and art as discrete categories wholly separate from one another. This argument is twofold, the first part of which is a historical survey that shows how the relationship between art and the state in Iran over the last sixty years has been co-constitutive. On the basis of this history, I then explore contemporary Iranian street art, both sanctioned and illicit, to show how this convergence of art and the state has continued to unfold in the Islamic Republic. I show how the boundaries between culture and the state have not calcified under the current regime but remain dynamically in flux, albeit different ways than in the previous historical epoch.</p><p> Lastly, I trace how the politics of secularism and religion both consolidates and frays the public/private divide within these three sites. Given this fact, the question of what to do with secularism and religion in Iran is ultimately a question of what to do about the divide between the private and public spheres. Taking up the issue of the double-bind structuring the public/private divide, I conclude my dissertation by surveying the ethical-politico limitations and possibilities of these alternative political imaginaries in Iran.</p>

<p>Jeddah, the second largest city in Saudi Arabia, is located on the west coast of the Red Sea in the Hijaz region. Lying between the two holy mosques, Makkah and Madinah, Jeddah is a more liberal and open-minded city compared to the rest of the conservative Sunni Islamic country. As the only stop along the religious tour with easy access by plane and car, Jeddah and its culture, food, architecture, and lifestyle have been greatly impacted due to the trade route and the religious tourism. Importantly, Al- Balad, the historic city center of Jeddah, is architecturally significant, housing numerous traditional Hijazi homes. With the discovery of oil, local attitudes changed and devalued the culture and the history. And these traditional structures took on a precarious position in the developing city: swimming against the current of Western aesthetics, stereotypes, and political influence, the traditional Hijazi home fell out of fashion, and many structures were left neglected. Due to these changing dynamics and the architectural changes it wrought, this doctoral dissertation endeavors to the architecture of the traditional homes of Al-Balad by investigating the complex interaction of cultural identity and space. </p><p> In analyzing the architectural details of these residential spaces, deciphering the meaning behind the aesthetics and construction of each architectural element, and considering women&rsquo;s agency and readings about their traditional lifestyles, religion, and beliefs, this work reveals the hidden gender dynamics within the home, dynamics that are too often ignored or misunderstood, particularly in the West. I argue that the traditional Hijazi home stands as proof of an empowered Saudi woman&mdash;but empowered according to a different definition of empowerment, one that challenges Western gender constructs and, instead, incorporates the unique social, religious, and historical context of Jeddah specifically and Saudi Arabia more broadly. Moreover, this dissertation offers a model and methodology for documenting the historic structures in the Hijazi region and promotes the appreciation Saudi culture and history. It fills a gap in current preservation practices for the nation; it aims to provide a foundation for architectural preservation curriculum for schools across Saudi Arabia; it offers a template for documentation practices in order to support, preserve, and understand the history and design of the 19th century Hijazi domestic architecture. </p><p> There is a valid need for this work. Currently, a poor archival system, a dearth of literature analyzing Saudi residential architecture, and restrictions and regulations imposed by the Saudi government have led to unique challenges. If this dissertation at times seems to avoid politically charged questions, especially within the context of feminist politics, it does so out of respect to Saudi authorities. Despite such challenges, this dissertation, by returning to Jeddah and deciphering and recording what&rsquo;s left of its traditional, historic buildings, hopes to initiate a more extensive and unified archiving system and more robust scholarship before an important aspect of Saudi history is lost. </p>

<p> The purpose of this phenomenological study is to investigate how expatriate Persian women, living in the United States, experience the damaging influence of traditional patriarchy. The resulting alienation from the self and this alienation&rsquo;s attendant psychological symptoms have been investigated under the conceptual heading of psychological exile, which has been treated by many preeminent schools in the psychotherapeutic tradition. The contemporary dynamic of exile has been set within a historical context, in which the rise of monotheism led to the destruction of matriarchal power structures. </p><p> In order to focus on how psychological exile is experienced by Persian women in diaspora, a phenomenological method was adopted: Persian women from three different age groups were interviewed, and their interviews were revised through a collaborative process between the interviewer and participants. The psychological essence of these related experiences was then distilled through the Giorgi method of interview data analysis (Giorgi &amp; Giorgi, 2003), combined with Robert Romanyshyn&rsquo;s method of Portrait Analysis (Romanyshyn, personal communications, 2010, 2011). From each of the three groups, emergent common themes were extracted and compared. </p><p> The patriarchal system has favored males and devalued females for centuries; each generation transmits its conceptual framework and cultural practices to the next generation, a process in which women are themselves complicit. This patriarchal system has not just limited the role of women in society, but has also actively damaged them by marring their identities, compromising their feminine natures, hiding them behind the veil of <i>abroo</i>, and robbing them of their natural language. These wounds manifest themselves through sexual repression, depression, and various other psychological symptoms. </p><p> The elucidation of how these women experience hierarchy&rsquo;s damaging effects will have many implications for therapists treating Persians. This research project was undertaken with the goal of providing a roadmap for therapists treating Persian clients.</p>

<p> The purpose of this paper is to conduct a qualitative phenomenological study with the intention to explain, explore, and determine the factors that lead to the emergence of women as leaders in Egypt. Accomplishing this investigation required the assessment of how participants perceive a condition through experience and consciousness and how events appear from a first-person point of view. The purposefully selected participants were women in leadership roles in both the public and private sectors. Ten women were interviewed two times each over six months. The study attempts to shed light on the factors that contribute to women in Egypt obtaining leadership positions. This study investigated the factors that contribute to the lack of women acquiring positions of management, guidance, and leadership -- positions usually dominated by men in Egypt by asking: (a) What are the perceived factors that contribute to the lack of women acquiring positions of management, guidance, and leadership? and (b) What are the perceived positions of leadership women occupy the most? Information was collected from the interviewee using the guide approach to provide a focus for the researcher and participants. This approach permitted a certain amount of autonomy and flexibility to acquire the appropriate information from the interviewee. The interviews consisted of presenting open-ended questions allowing women to reflect on how they were successful in obtaining these leadership positions. The study revealed four pertinent themes: (a) family influence, (b) leadership position, (c) family obligations, and (d) level of education. </p>