Books by Judith Surkis

During more than a century of colonial rule over Algeria, the French state shaped and reshaped the meaning and practice of Muslim law by regulating it and circumscribing it to the domain of family law, while applying the French Civil Code to appropriate the property of Algerians. In Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930, Judith...

Surkis shows how masculine sexuality became central to the making of a republican social order. Marriage, Surkis argues, affirmed the citizen's masculinity, while also containing and controlling his desires.