Fourth Annual Conference of the UCSB Iranian Studies Initiative -- Slavery and Sexual Labor in the Middle East and North Africa

October 19th-20th, 2018
UC Santa Barbara, California

The theme of this year’s conference is Slavery and Sexual Labor in the Middle East and North Africa. Papers will be on a variety of issues dealing with slavery, concubinage, prostitution, indentured servitude or debt slavery, as well as the lives of orphans, divorced women, and widows in Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and the Persian Gulf areas.  Presenters and discussants will be looking at parallels and disjunctures between early modern and contemporary forms of coercive gendered labor practices and sexual servitude in the 19th and 20th centuries.

See link to conference webpage below