The academic study of women in the Middle East grew from traditional branches of learning such as history, anthropology, politics, and literary studies. More recently, it has incorporated cutting-edge areas of academic endeavour, including critical theory and new thinking on sexuality, labour, health, media, and material culture. As research in and around the area flourishes as never before, this new collection from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of scholarly literature.

In four volumes, Women of the Middle East draws together the key research, both canonical and contemporary, to provide users with a comprehensive survey of all the major issues relating to women in one of the world's most challenging and contested regions.

Women of the Middle East is fully indexed and each of the four volumes has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the learned editor, which places the major works in their historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research resource.