December 10: Love in the Middle East: The Contradictions of Romance in the Facebook World


love in the middle eastLove in the Middle East: The Contradictions of Romance in the Facebook World

a lecture by Roger O. Friedland
December 10, Thursday
5 to 6:30 pm
Roger O. Friedland, Visiting Professor, Media, Culture, & Communication, New York University
Romantic love is a social fact in the Muslim world. It is also a gender politics impinging on religious and patriarchal understandings of female modesty and agency. This paper analyzes the rise of love as a basis of mate selection in a number of Muslim-majority countries: Algeria, Iran, Palestine, Tunisia and Turkey where we have conducted web-based anonymous surveys of Facebook users. Young people increasingly want love in their married lives, but they and the communities in which they live remain uncomfortable with the mating practices through which such love has traditionally been achieved in the Western world. The talk will explore the religious contradictions and the gender politics of this modern heterosexual love.
Roger Friedland will discuss his essay “Love in the Middle East: the Contradictions of Romance in the Facebook World,” co-authored with Janet Afary, Paolo Gardinali and Cambria Naslund.
MCC Commons
239 Greene Street, 8th Floor

Organized by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & SexualityDepartment of Media, Culture, & Communication, and Center for Media, Culture, & History.


This event is free & open to the public. Venue is wheelchair-accessible.
For more information about this event, contact the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality at csgs(at)nyu.edu or 212-992-9540.
Facebook event page here.
image design: Jade Elizabeth Borgeson



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