Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties Global Perspectives on Marriage, Crisis, and Nation

by Celello, Kristin; Kholoussy, Hanan

• ISBN13: 9780199856732
• ISBN10: 0199856737
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-03-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Since the late nineteenth century, fears that marriage is in crisis have reverberated around the world. Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties explores this phenomenon, asking why people of various races, classes, and nations frequently seem to be fretting about marriage. Each of the twelve chapters analyzes a specific time and place during which proclamations of marriage crisis have dominated public discourse, whether in 1920s India, mid-century France, or present-day Iran. While each nation has had its own reasons for escalating anxieties over marriage and the family, common themes emerge in how people have understood and debated crises in marriage. Collectively, the chapters reveal how diverse individuals have deployed the institution of marriage to talk not only about intimate relationships, but also to understand the nation, its problems, and various socioeconomic and political transformations. The volume reveals critical insights and showcases original research across interdisciplinary and national boundaries, making a groundbreaking contribution to current scholarship on marriage, family, nationalism, gender, and the law.

Author Biography

Kristin Celello is Associate Professor of History at Queens College, City University of New York. She is the author of Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States.

Hanan Kholoussy is an Associate Professor of History at The American University in Cairo. She is the author of For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis That Made Modern Egypt.