AFI Feminist Book Talk: The Future is Feminist with author Sara Rahnama in conversation with Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué

The Future Is Feminist by Sara Rahnama offers a closer look at a pivotal moment in Algerian history when Algerians looked to feminism as a path out of the stifling realities of French colonial rule. Algerian people focused outward to developments in the Middle East, looking critically at their own society and with new eyes to Islamic tradition. In doing so, they reordered the world on their own terms—pushing back against French colonial claims about Islam’s inherent misogyny.

Sara Rahnama is an assistant professor of history at Morgan State University and the author of The Future is Feminist: Women and Social Change in Interwar Algeria. Her writing has appeared in both academic and popular spaces, including Gender & History, The Washington Post, and The Conversation. She was formerly a Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué is associate professor of African cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with additional affiliations in the Department of History and the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies. Mougoué is a trained historian, focusing on women’s and gender history in mid-twentieth century West Africa. She is the author of Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (2019).