Temple University Libraries, the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy Present: Gender, the Middle East, and Western Reactions, A Conversation with Joan Scott, Todd Shepard and Kelly Shannon, moderated by Laura Levitt March 3, 2:30 p.m, Paley Library Lecture Hall (Ground Floor, 1210 Polett Walk). Joan Scott of the Institute for Advance Study, Todd Shepard of Johns Hopkins, and Kelly Shannon, doctoral candidate in history and a Center for the Humanities at Temple graduate fellow, in conversation with Temple’s Laura Levitt on issues of gender in the Middle East, and how Western nations have responded. Just as Persepolis has become a sensational hit with Western audiences, these scholars will demonstrate how Westerners have viewed Muslim gender relations and taken action to alleviate the perceived oppression of women in Muslim communities, from banning the headscarf in French schools to integrating concerns for women’s rights into U.S. foreign policy. Program presented as part of the 2010 ONE BOOK, ONE PHILADELPHIA program featuring Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis. Please join us on March 3 for this exciting conversation.

Joan W. Scott is Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. Scott studies French history and the history of women and gender. Her most recent book is The Politics of the Veil, which critically analyzes the debates in France about the banning of Islamic headscarves in state schools.

Todd Shepard teaches in the History department at Johns Hopkins University. He explores 20th-century France and the French Empire, with a focus on how imperialism intersects with histories of national identity, state institutions, race, and sexuality; his studies and teaching have concentrated on modern European history (particularly France), modern colonialism, and the history of sexuality.

Kelly Shannon (A.B., Vassar; M.A., University of Connecticut) is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Temple University. Her dissertation, “Veiled Intentions: Islam, Global Feminism, and U.S. Foreign Policy Since the Late 1970s” interrogates the U.S. discourse about the perceived oppression of Muslim women since the Iranian Revolution and examines how that discourse came to influence the formulation of U.S. foreign policy toward the Muslim world in recent decades. Kelly is currently the CHAT Graduate Teaching Fellow for the Center for the Humanities at Temple, and she has received various fellowships and awards from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, and Temple University.