Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Complicating "Female Suicide Bombers" : Violence, Agency And Gender In The Rhetoric Of Shahida, Chelsea Rock

Honors Theses

Since 2002, popular Western news media has become fixated with the "advent" of the Palestinian female suicide bomber when a woman named Wafa Idris detonated herself on a busy Jaffa Road in Israel. Questions about gender, domesticity, violence, subjectivity, and technology arise as researchers, journalists and others confront culturally conceived notions about women and their roles in both Islamic and Western societies. Proposing a broader concept of violence that is cognizant of women's violent histories and struggles over agency, this essay suggests that analyses of women and violence are incomplete without critically thinking about the "female suicide bomber"--or shahida--within their …