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presidential LECTURER

April 30 - May 1, 2007

Joan W. Scott
Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science

Cover-Up: French Gender Equality
and the Islamic Headscarf

 

About the Speaker

JOAN W. SCOTT’s work has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience. Drawing on a range of philosophical thought, as well as on a rethinking of her own training as a labor historian, she has contributed to the formulation of a field of critical history. Written more than twenty years ago, her now classic article, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” continues to inspire innovative research on women and gender.

In her latest work Professor Scott has been concerned with the ways in which difference poses problems for democratic practice. She has taken up this question in her most recent books: Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man; Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism; and the forthcoming The Politics of the Veil: Banning Islamic Headscarves in French Public Schools.

Joan W. Scott’s lecture will be a critical examination of the explanation, given by supporters of the ban on Muslim headscarves in French public schools, that concern for the emancipation of women was the crux of the matter.

Program

Monday, April 30, 7:00 p.m.

Lecture
Levinthal Hall
Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa Street
Stanford University

Tuesday, May 1 , 4:00 p.m.

Discussion
Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa Street
Stanford University

Resources