Susanna Ferguson
Biographic Data
| ID | 4440232 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susanna Ferguson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susanna |
| FAMILY NAME | Ferguson |
| SIGNATURE | FERGUSON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Smith College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0949-6706 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Arabic Ecologies
This article traces how Arab writers invoked vegetal life to think through questions of organic and political belonging in and around late nineteenth-century Beirut. Close readings of natural theologies by Ibrahim al-Hurani, Nawfal Nimatallah Nawfal, Husayn al-Jisr, and Salim Kassab show how they theorized a regime of vegetal belonging based around mulāʾima (divine accordance) that pointed in multiple political directions. On one hand, their plan…
Labors of Love
The Future Is Feminist
Labors of Love
How to raise a child became a central concern of intellectual debate from Cairo to Beirut over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Intimately linked with discussions around capitalism and democracy, considerations about women, gender, and childrearing emerged as essential to modern social theory. Arab writers, particularly women, made sex, the body, and women's ethical labor central to fending off European imperial ad…
Astronomy for Girls
In 1874–75 American Protestant missionaries in Beirut published two astronomy textbooks in Arabic. While male students at the Syrian Protestant College studied Cornelius Van Dyck’s Foundations of Astronomy, girls at secondary schools—the highest level of female education—studied Eliza Everett’s Principles of Astronomy: For Use in Schools. These texts appeared at the height of a cross-cultural encounter between American Protestants and the inhabit…
Sex, Sovereignty, and the Biological in the Interwar Arab East
This article frames the history of anticolonialism in the Arab world as a history of gender, sex, and power. By thinking with early twentieth-century Arab intellectuals, it revises the assumption that the heterosexual body enters into politics primarily as a site of regulation and control. Europeans justified colonialism in the Arab East by arguing that Arabs were like children who needed tutelage before self-rule. Arab writers contested these te…
On Artists and Artisans
In May 2014, the editors of CSSAAME hosted a discussion with the Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander about artistic practice and its role in deconstructing (and reframing) the often vexed relationship Eurocentric canons of art history and aesthetic theory have with regional art and artists. The discussion is the first of a series of events that intersect ongoing concerns of the journal, even as they open new avenues for collective consider…
Listening to Rights Talk in Damascus
Ferguson reads a 2009–11 debate over the proposed reissue of Syria's Personal Status Code in the Syrian feminist journal al-Thara to highlight the role women's rights discourse plays in disciplining and producing political subjects. She draws on Talal Asad's observation that “languages of justice do not simply justify political acts, they help to shape political actors.” In the case of al-Thara, Ferguson argues, “women's rights” functions as one …
Listening to Rights Talk in Damascus
Ferguson reads a 2009–11 debate over the proposed reissue of Syria's Personal Status Code in the Syrian feminist journal al-Thara to highlight the role women's rights discourse plays in disciplining and producing political subjects. She draws on Talal Asad's observation that “languages of justice do not simply justify political acts, they help to shape political actors.” In the case of al-Thara, Ferguson argues, “women's rights” functions as one …
On Artists and Artisans
In May 2014, the editors of CSSAAME hosted a discussion with the Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander about artistic practice and its role in deconstructing (and reframing) the often vexed relationship Eurocentric canons of art history and aesthetic theory have with regional art and artists. The discussion is the first of a series of events that intersect ongoing concerns of the journal, even as they open new avenues for collective consider…
Listening to Rights Talk in Damascus
Ferguson reads a 2009–11 debate over the proposed reissue of Syria's Personal Status Code in the Syrian feminist journal al-Thara to highlight the role women's rights discourse plays in disciplining and producing political subjects. She draws on Talal Asad's observation that “languages of justice do not simply justify political acts, they help to shape political actors.” In the case of al-Thara, Ferguson argues, “women's rights” functions as one …
Sex, Sovereignty, and the Biological in the Interwar Arab East
This article frames the history of anticolonialism in the Arab world as a history of gender, sex, and power. By thinking with early twentieth-century Arab intellectuals, it revises the assumption that the heterosexual body enters into politics primarily as a site of regulation and control. Europeans justified colonialism in the Arab East by arguing that Arabs were like children who needed tutelage before self-rule. Arab writers contested these te…
Astronomy for Girls
In 1874–75 American Protestant missionaries in Beirut published two astronomy textbooks in Arabic. While male students at the Syrian Protestant College studied Cornelius Van Dyck’s Foundations of Astronomy, girls at secondary schools—the highest level of female education—studied Eliza Everett’s Principles of Astronomy: For Use in Schools. These texts appeared at the height of a cross-cultural encounter between American Protestants and the inhabit…
Labors of Love
How to raise a child became a central concern of intellectual debate from Cairo to Beirut over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Intimately linked with discussions around capitalism and democracy, considerations about women, gender, and childrearing emerged as essential to modern social theory. Arab writers, particularly women, made sex, the body, and women's ethical labor central to fending off European imperial ad…
Labors of Love
The Future Is Feminist
Arabic Ecologies
This article traces how Arab writers invoked vegetal life to think through questions of organic and political belonging in and around late nineteenth-century Beirut. Close readings of natural theologies by Ibrahim al-Hurani, Nawfal Nimatallah Nawfal, Husayn al-Jisr, and Salim Kassab show how they theorized a regime of vegetal belonging based around mulāʾima (divine accordance) that pointed in multiple political directions. On one hand, their plan…
Islamic Studies and History (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · History (3 works) · History (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Sociology (3 works)