Table of Contents

Contents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstract

The introduction presents the two overlapping arguments of the book. First, the experience of the Anglo-Egyptian rule was intimately expressed on and through Sudanese bodies. Second, the body and its adornments are markers of socio-political place. Amidst the social and political disruptions of empire, Sudanese women used their bodies to calibrate their positions within multiple systems of protected domesticity, empire, nationalism, and modernization. The introduction places the book in conversation with current scholarship on gender and the body in Africa, the Middle East, and world history. It is particularly informed by the growing interdisciplinary field of analysis of "the global and the intimate," which contends that attention to intimate domains gives new perspective to familiar, grand narratives.

1The Post Office Pen: The Imperial Mission chapter abstract

This context-building chapter begins with the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan in 1898, the peculiarities of dual control, and Britons' first impressions of Sudanese women–most notably their fears and concerns over "backwards" traditions such as the harem and female genital cutting. It introduces the tobe, an imported cotton garment and the common form of everyday dress for married women in northern Sudan. Tobes possessed a unique social worth; they circulated at the hands of men and were given as gifts from husbands to wives on the event of their marriage or the birth of a child. Thus the tobe marked critical milestones in a woman's reproductive life and served as tangible evidence of her domestic responsibilities and relationships.

2"Forty White Tobes": Enclosures and the Campaign for Pure Bodies chapter abstract

In 1921, upon learning of the common practice of female genital cutting, the government founded a Midwifery Training School in hopes of eradicating the procedure. The School aimed to replace traditional birth practitioners with formally trained midwives educated in biomedical knowledge and practices. Despite the private nature of their practice, the success of the MTS and its pupils was highly visible. This new class of midwives distinguished themselves from their untrained counterparts by donning a uniform of a crisp white tobe. Relying on an unusual collection of photographs of trained and untrained midwives, this chapter marks the first shift in the tobe's symbolism away from purely domestic messages. When used as a uniform, the tobe signaled new forms of knowledge and professionalism. No longer simply a marker of familial ties, a woman's tobe could now also affirm a relationship with the imperial state.

3The Schoolmistresses' Ribs: Dress, Discipline, and Progress chapter abstract

This chapter centers on the expansion of girls' education in the 1930s and 1940s and highlights contrasting themes of discipline and mobility. Out of the harem and in the classroom, Sudanese girls were subject to new forms of control. Imperial logic held that civilized minds could only come from disciplined bodies. Young girls were the primary targets of bodily reforms. Teachers and students both understood that outward appearances, such as uniforms and western dress, and the hidden intimate marks of female genital cutting were powerful measures of modernity, belonging, and difference. Yet even as schoolgirls negotiated claims to authority over their private parts, they eagerly experimented with new behaviors in new civic spaces. In very real ways, participation in educational programs reshaped bodies and behaviors.

4The Woman's Voice: Claiming City Streets chapter abstract

This chapter follows the rise of women's activism in the late 1940s and explores the connection between political voices and public presence. Activists simultaneously claimed an intellectual space in the emerging women's press and a physical space in public meetings. Women's civic engagement was a bodily process that altered urban landscapes, prompting insults and even violence. Overcoming such dangers relied on a doubled program of domestication: both the taming of public space and the introduction of controlled women's bodies into the city. This chapter builds upon current theories of dress-as-political praxis and argues that activist women capitalized on the modesty and cultural authenticity of the tobe in order to create space for modern, and sometimes radical, rhetoric and behaviors.

5Khartoum at Night: Global Politics and Personal Pleasures chapter abstract

At the end of empire, Sudanese women negotiated new behaviors of consumption and beauty in an attempt to define themselves in a rapidly changing world. Faced with images of Hollywood starlets and imperial standards of civilized bodies, activists rejected the scars, and tattoos that had adorned previous generations of Sudanese women. The tobe, however, remained an important symbol of authentic beauty in the modern world. As tobe fashions expanded, their value as a vehicle for political expression increased. Throughout the 1950s, the names of tobe styles become increasing editorial as women and merchants named new tobe fashions after public figures and current events. A highly accessible political platform, the tobe allowed even non-activist women to offer savvy commentary on the world around them. Joining the threads of politics and fashion, this chapter brings into focus the intimate connection between Sudanese women's daily dress and their socio-political consciousness.

Conclusion chapter abstract

This brief conclusion reiterates the call for scholars to look beyond text-based historical evidence and seek out alternate sites in which women and other marginal groups made meanings of their lives. It proposes that we consider the collectivity of tobes, and specifically the way in which they are remembered in relation to one another, as an archive in which Sudanese women wove sophisticated, yet accessible, narratives of their imperial experience. It ends with a look at the continued political importance of tobe names in twenty-first century Sudan.

About the Author

Marie Grace Brown is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Kansas.

Reviews

"Marie Grace Brown completely reorients the history of Sudan. Exploring the nationalism and the political acumen of northern Sudanese women, she adds important, original insights of the gendered history of Africa and the Middle East—Sudan's demographic presence in both is huge—by politicizing the manufacture, design and consumption of clothing. Deeply researched and gracefully written, Khartoum at Night is a brilliant work."
*University of Pennsylvania*

"This fascinating book advances African gender history by breaking new ground for the study of bodies and dress. In Marie Grace Brown's superb analysis, the tobe not only serves as a leitmotif of women's quest for spatial and public mobility but unfolds as an archive of their worldviews. Khartoum at Night will captivate the reader, and it's highly recommended for the classroom!"
*University of California, Santa Barbara*

"Marie Grace Brown's beautifully written monograph, Khartoum At Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan, is a history of northern Sudanese women's bodies in motion during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899-1956). In the first English-language monograph to focus on women as actors in Sudanese history, Brown nimbly weaves the quotidian movements of Sudanese women back into a historiographical tapestry that has previously kept them "fixed at home," unconnected to the political world around them....Brown's exceptional analytical insights and flawless writing made writing a review that captured the book's kinetic energy a truly difficult task. This book will make an excellent addition to undergraduate and graduate courses in a range of fields, including but not limited to the history of the modern Middle East, North Africa, and East Africa; women's and gender studies, material culture and body history; and the history of imperialism and colonialism."
*H-AMCA, H-Net Reviews*

"Marie Grace Brown provides a nuanced account of the impact of politics and economics on Sudanese women during the period of British colonial dominance....This intense reflection of Sudan's history offers a fresh perspective on current events."
*Aramco World*