gender studies

Ethnography and Eroticism in Russian Turkestan

There are not many examples of gender studies in the field of historical research of Muslim peripheries of the Russian Empire. This article explores the representations of Muslim women in pre‑revolutionary Turkestan. It focuses on the research and practices of colonial ethnography, which supplied the authorities with knowledge about local people. In particular, the article considers and compare “The Turkestan Album”, a state‑sponsored photography project, and French traveler Hugues Krafft’s volume “Through Russian Turkestan»”, with the pictures of Muslim women.

“Blessed Are You, Who Has (Not) Made Me a Woman”? Feminist Turn in Judaism and Jewish Studies

The article presents a review of the scholarship published in the last half-century that constitutes the feminist turn in Judaism and Jewish studies and analyzes the causes and the main trends of this phenomenon, in particular, the practice of combining academic research and public activism. The first part of this review examines feminist criticism of Judaism and feminist theorizing aimed at gender reform of contemporary Judaism. The second part analyzes research that recovers women’s presence in Biblical, Talmudic, and medieval Judaism.