The introduction begins by tracing the historical ascent of comparativism, studying how comparison became a privileged tool of knowledge production in conjunction with imperialism. It examines the minute rhetorical operations and common tropes involved in Iran/Türkiye comparisons through an analysis of modern international scholarship on the Shahnameh, a classic verse epic associated with Iranian national identity.

The book concludes with a discussion of the current state of gender-based violence in the United States while highlighting the specific landscape of advocacy organizations that are working in this space to serve intersectionally marginalized populations. The chapter elaborates on the challenges that remain for intersectional advocates as they intervene in this issue, as well as the possibilities that lie ahead for their advocacy efforts. These findings are not just applicable to policies and laws related to gender-based violence but are also valuable for identifying policy gaps in U.S. political institutions more generally. The chapter then gives a call-to-action to policymakers, advocacy organizations, foundations, and individuals to critically evaluate the current structure of U.S. policy institutions—who they benefit, who they represent, and to what extent they are ineffective for resolving some of our most pressing social issues. The call is accompanied with tangible examples of how these stakeholders can practice and support intersectional advocacy to change U.S. policy institutions to be more effective, equitable, and representative of an increasingly diverse democracy.

Black feminist anthropology has been and continues to be rooted in intellectual engagements with transnational Blackness, transnational feminism, queer politics, global anti-Blackness, anti-imperialism, and anticapitalism. Black feminist anthropology is a global endeavor that applies theory and lived experience to restructure ethnography and praxis that is engaged in an intersectional analysis of various oppressions and strategies for resistance, survival, and freedom. This chapter builds on those studies that identify the importance of including transnational Black feminism in the anthropological canon and supporting scholars who center Black women’s experiences throughout the diaspora. The aim is to encourage the use of a transnational Black feminist analytic to transform anthropological approaches to the study of Africa and its diaspora; constructions of labor, production, and reproduction; racialized identity formation; the performance of those identities across gender and sexuality; and narratives of oppression, resistance, and survival. The author centers transnational Black feminist frameworks that see the formation of diaspora as a site for solidarity that coalesce as a result of, around, and between women-led and gender-based political movements. For Black feminist anthropologists it names what was already possible, while providing an intentional epistemic framework and methodology for collaboration with Black feminists throughout Africa and its diaspora.

Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations presents an authoritative overview of the various continuities and changes in migration and globalization from the 1800s to the present day. Despite revolutionary changes in communication technologies, the growing accessibility of long-distance travel, and globalization across major economies, the rise of nation-states empowered immigration regulation and bureaucratic capacities for enforcement that curtailed migration. One major theme worldwide across the post-1800 centuries was the differentiation between “skilled” and “unskilled” workers, often considered through a racialized lens; it emerged as the primary divide between greater rights of immigration and citizenship for the former, and confinement to temporary or unauthorized migrant status for the latter. Through thirty-one chapters, this volume further evaluates the long global history of migration; and it shows that despite the increased disciplinary systems, the primacy of migration remains and continues to shape political, economic, and social landscapes around the world.

This chapter examines the gender and sexual politics of the Iranian Students Association (ISA), the US affiliate of the Confederation of Iranian Students (National Union) (CISNU), which was the largest anti-shah opposition formation during the 1960s and 1970s. While the participation of CISNU in the creation of pan-Third Worldist solidarities has been established, Iranian foreign student activists have been left out of narratives of the emergence of Third World feminism as an outgrowth of women’s commitments to the anti-imperialist movements of the era. The author argues that the efforts of some ISA members to challenge gender hierarchies, and to place the struggle for women’s equality on the immediate organizing agenda – rather than postpone this goal until after the arrival of socialism – represent gestures toward an anti-imperialist feminism that was severely constrained by historical and ideological circumstances. Nonetheless, these gestures are important for subsequent generations of Iranian diasporic feminists to parse, as they contain ideas crucial for reimagining transnational feminist solidarities today. Through close readings of interviews with former ISA members and movement literature, the author traces a genealogy of Iranian revolutionary gender consciousness rooted in an analysis of the intersections between patriarchy, empire, and dictatorship.

This chapter focuses on the political meanings of state feminism. It begins with an overview of the state’s vision of gender roles and the modern family as concretized in postcolonial legislation. Women’s rights were an aspect of state-building, political centralization, and foreign policy. The national women’s union and the women’s press (the magazines Al-Mar’a, Femme, and Faiza) engaged with and transformed the hegemonic discourses of modern womanhood. The women’s press contributed to wider conversations about postcolonial culture through its attention to women across the Middle East and around the world. Middle-class women, often urban and educated, embodied modern womanhood as they participated in national politics and diplomacy. In the heightened political contexts of Afro-Asian solidarity and Cold War rivalries, women’s allegiances were matters of global political importance. Tunisian women were simultaneously recruited to bolster their nation’s alliance with the United States and improve its reputation among Arab and Middle Eastern nations. Though forced to contend with the hegemonic articulations of liberal state feminism, Tunisian women’s participation in international solidarity networks represented a wide array of feminist positionalities that transcended the parameters of state control and official ideology.

The increasing popularity of young adult fiction has been most often linked to the blockbuster success of North American series adapted into movie cycles, including The Twilight Saga (20058), The Hunger Games Trilogy (200810), and The Divergent Series (201113). Across these novel-to-film franchises, the centrality of a female heroine has spurred a number of critical debates about the feminism or antifeminism of the young adult genre. However, these debates have neglected a wealth of young adult fiction written beyond the USA. These conversations look very different when we begin to consider feminism in a transnational landscape, to include conflicts between Western and non-Western conceptions of agency, international development police directed towards youth populations, an international division of gendered labour practices, and diaspora perspectives on the family as a unit of social reproduction. This chapter outlines how a transnational perspective changes the way we articulate both gender and adolescence, using the young adult novel as a literary site wherein these intersecting identities are catalysed.