In October 2017, Quebec’s National Assembly passed legislation prohibiting women from receiving public services while wearing a niqab, which covers the wearer’s face. Muslim women were among those who objected. Saima Sajid said to Globe and Mail reporter Ingrid Peritz, “If you choose to wear a bikini, why can’t I cover myself?” These contrasting approaches to women’s bodies and sexuality lie at the heart of gender historian Joan Wallach Scott’s probing and intentionally provocative new book, Sex and Secularism.
Sex and Secularism is the tenth title to appear in Princeton University Press’s Public Square series, which aims to “showcase some of the world’s finest public intellectuals writing on topics at the forefront of political discourse.” Other series authors, especially Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore and University of Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum, will likely be better known to LRC readers. But...
Susan Whitney is an associate professor of history at Carleton University. She is teaching courses on twentieth-century France, modern Paris, and comparative youth history this year. Whitney is the author of Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Duke University Press).
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