The Future is Feminist examines how Muslim feminists in colonial Algeria looked East for inspiration and offers a new perspective on the relationship between gender, Islam, and the French empire. These feminists rhetorically challenged the colonial claim of Islam’s inherent misogyny and sought a new future for Algerian Muslim belonging in the modern world based on women's rights. 

D Sara Rahnama is an Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Program for the Study of the Middle East & North Africa at Morgan State University. She is the author of The Future is Feminist: Women and Social Change in Interwar Algeria (Cornell University Press), winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s Nikki Keddie Book Prize and the French Colonial Historical Society’s Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in both academic and popular spaces, including Gender & History, French Historical Studies, The Washington Post, Middle East Eye, and The Conversation. She was formerly a fellow at the Library of Congress’s Kluge Center.