This chapter explores the religious influences on Nigeria, the spread and development of these religions, and their incorporation or imposition in various precolonial and colonial institutions. The topics explored throughout the chapter will lay the foundation for modern-day Nigeria’s religious make-up and sectarian conflict. There are two primary phenomena detailed in the chapter. The first is the efforts of colonial forces to implement a system of indirect rule, an essential component of which was the incorporation of pre-existing religious institutions into the colonial fold. The second was the desire of colonial and missionary forces to spread Christianity and Western culture to the various peoples of Nigeria. Both processes would promote Islam and Christianity at the expense of African traditional religions. However, Indigenous practices would vigorously resist, often infusing their beliefs into colonial institutions and various sects of Christianity.

Globalisation has brought the world closer and urged nations to consider the differences between their various legal systems. Comparative law is vital to facilitating this. There are many reasons for the discipline to consider the legal systems of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The MENA population does not only represent a large part of the world, but the MENA region also has attractive markets with active investment opportunities. Recent studies indicate a remarkable move towards foreign investment in the MENA region business market. This chapter provides an overview of the fundamentals of the MENA region’s legal systems. What is new about this study is that it does not adopt the classical approach of examining Islamic law as the legal cornerstone in this area of the world. Rather, the chapter provides a comparison between the impact of Western laws – founded initially on either the Napoleonic Code or common law doctrines – versus the impact of Islamic law ‘Shari‘a’ on building the legal systems of the MENA countries. The chapter also gives examples of the role of comparative law in shaping some contemporary issues in the MENA countries today, such as migration and women’s rights.

This chapter focuses on the essayistic contribution of women writers before the American Civil War. Antebellum women exploited the essay’s openness to write in formats that conformed approximately to conventions of men’s writings but that took shape in host genres, frequently letters, or in generic hybrids as they negotiated gender prescriptions. Conduct manuals, schooling, and published lecture-essays advised on composing essays yet encouraged cultivation in cognate genres of conversation and the familiar letter, social “accomplishments” ceded as the sole literary “arts” in which women might excel. Conversational culture also spawned associations in which women circulated manuscripts and could offer access to periodical publishers in need of materials for audiences growing as literacy spread. Publishing compositions became almost a rite of passage for middle-class white women. Poverty and racist practices posed obstacles to education, publication, and fame for other women who nonetheless composed essays and published outside mainstream venues. They figure among those who produced an extensive body of essays whose range, merit, and impact remain inadequately acknowledged.

A series of events fueled the protests against the shah’s regime. The burning of Cinema Rex and the Black Friday riots mobilized large swaths of the Iranian public against the king. Religious groups operated through their networks to protest the Pahlavi state. The shah’s government went through a rapid succession of prime ministers, as Ayatollah Khomeini became anointed as the leader of the opposition, which included many different political groups. The revolution came crashing in. Within months, Islamic policies reversed decades of Pahlavi secular reforms as women were forced to reveil. The regime promptly executed Pahlavi diehards and political activists who embraced different ideologies. An Islamic Republic took shape and punished America for its ties to the shah by taking US diplomats as hostages. Meanwhile, Iraq seized on this moment of domestic turmoil to launch a devastating war against Iran. That island of stability became a harbor of volatility.

This chapter examines the 2004 Moroccan Family Code governing marriage, divorce, marital property, child custody guardianship, and parentage. The enactment process, which included a multi-stakeholder Royal Commission and Parliamentary debate, and was marked by unprecedented public mobilization for and against reforms, marked a break with the previous Personal Status Code. Multiple references in the law to international human rights standards, positive law, and religious precepts create a certain legal schizophrenia and inconsistent decisions across jurisdictions. While substantial reforms were made on the face of the law, in particular to provisions regarding marriage, substantial inequality and discrimination persist, particularly in unequal access to divorce for women, financial relationships between spouses, and child custody and guardianship. International human rights bodies and local activists alike have highlighted the need for further revisions to the Family Code to abolish remaining inequality. Since 2011, Morocco has been led by an Islamist-majority governmental coalition opposed to further Family Code reform, raising questions about the relationship between democracy and women’s rights.

After the 2011 Arab uprisings, Egypt adopted a new constitution in 2014 that strengthened the principle of equality between men and women. In spite of its call on the State to achieve equality in all areas, family law continues to establish significant differences between wives and husbands within the couple. This contribution examines the reforms introduced in Egyptian personal status law since the beginning of the twentieth century and the differences based on gender that remain in both marriage and divorce rights and stresses how governments had to present the reforms as taking place within the shari’a in order to avoid their rejection by conservative religious circles and society.

This chapter brings together two seemingly separate aspects of Hainan Island’s history during the Chinese Communist revolution and into the early People’s Republic. These two aspects are the anti-localism political campaigns of the 1950s through which local leadership was punished or removed for favoring local priorities over national ones, and the relatively high revolutionary participation by women in the Communist fighting forces of Hainan. This chapter uses recent Chinese and Western scholarship, as well as memoir and oral history, to examine how traditional gender roles were reinforced through the anti-localism campaigns, even during what were otherwise some of the most radical moments of the early PRC. The popular revolutionary drama Red Detachment of Women took several forms, including ballet and opera, and as a cultural artifact it stood in for the history of women fighters on Hainan from its first performances in the early 1960s. Like the anti-localism campaigns, Red Detachment of Women, as a didactic drama, reinforced patriarchal and mainland control over Hainan, and this chapter aims to illuminate some of the ways in which this happened.

This chapter traces the influence of second-wave feminist activism, scholarship, and fiction in the US on women’s fiction of the 1990s. The first half examines a selection of literary texts published between the late 1960s and late 1980s that attest to the innovative techniques that women and genderqueer writers developed in this period to articulate feminist ideas, record the movement’s reception by the public, and recuperate aspects of American history long overlooked by a male-dominated academy. The second half turns to two novels by women published at the twentieth century’s close, both of which move between the 1990s and the previous six decades: Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt and Paule Marshall’s Daughters. The narrative strategies these novels use to challenge universalist accounts of history are revealed. These two novels featuring female protagonists who abandoned PhD projects dismissed as trivial by their white male supervisors are representative of a broader tendency in women’s fiction of the period, which is best approached as a repository for the historiographic narratives rejected by a white male-dominated academy.

Latin America in 1870–1930 initiated many modernization projects, and “First Wave” feminism resulted from expanded education, a modernizing strategy. Feminism engaged in emancipation strategies and legal and labor reforms. Suffrage was not its primary aim. Periodicals showed feminism’s impact in culture, commerce, civil rights, and public health, and films showed women in daring roles. Early leaders were professionals (Moreau de Justo) and labor activists (Capetillo, Muzzili). Feminism was first successful in cities (São Paulo, Buenos Aires), changing education, labor practices, and child protection. The Mexican Revolution produced new contexts for women in the arts (Campobello). The US presence in Cuba and Puerto Rico reordered Caribbean racial and social hierarchies. Women writers and activists of varied social classes, feminist or not, showed the costs and benefits of urbanization, family, and immigration. Teaching and writing allowed “middlebrow” access to the public sphere (Mistral, Storni). Literature brought women’s issues to the public sphere.

The protection and promotion of human rights and democracy in Latin America, a region historically beset by civil strife, military actions, and foreign intervention, is a difficult task. Before World War II, human rights and democracy promotion were not factors in U.S.–Latin American relations (or, in fact, international relations in general). When the United States or regional governments invoked concerns about human rights or democracy during the Cold War, they did so based on narrow security interests rather than any serious commitment to human rights or democracy. However, there has been a renewed commitment to human rights and democracy in the twenty-first century. This chapter addresses human rights and democracy promotion in the context of the construction of norms and agreements by U.S. and Latin American governments.

The USA is born as a site of intense struggle in and out of the musical realm. Escapees from slavery sing of such heroes as the maroon leader Jean St. Malo, songs are sung over “The Rights of Woman,” and the labor movement produces its first store of agit-prop songs. As the Indigenous peoples of the east stare into the face of settler-colonial encroachment, the nascent music industry erupts with sentimental songs about the “Noble Savage” and the “Vanishing Indian.” Partisans of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson fight their battles through song, and the Louisiana Purchase doubles the size of the USA and the territory for musical conflict. The rise of the “Injun Fighter” has its own soundtrack, eliding the continued seizure of Indigenous territory. The War of 1812 gives birth to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” while the songs of conscientious objectors are pushed to the margins. Blackface minstrelsy emerges as one of the greatest cultural challenges to Black American self-definition. Meanwhile, eastern cities are bursting at the seams with the steady influx of European immigrants, and the hawks of Manifest Destiny look westward to Texas, Mexico, and beyond, buttressed by shrill musical calls to “Remember the Alamo!”