Synopsis
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The veil can be an instrument of feminist empowerment, and veiled anonymity can confer power to women. Starting from her own marriage ceremony at which she first wore a full veil, Rafia Zakaria examines how veils do more than they get credit for.
Part memoir and part philosophical investigation, Veil questions that what is seen is always good and free, and that what is veiled can only signal servility and subterfuge. From personal encounters with the veil in France (where it is banned) to Iran (where it is compulsory), Zakaria shows how the garment's reputation as a pre-modern relic is fraught and up for grabs. The veil is an object in constant transformation, whose myriad meanings challenge the absolute truths of patriarchy.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
About the Authors
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney, a political philosopher, and a columnist for DAWN Pakistan and AL Jazeera America. She is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, Aeon, Guernica, the New York Times and others. Her book The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (2015) received positive reviews in the New York Times, NPR, Ms.Magazine. Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The Toronto Star, Bustle, Hindustan Times, DNA India, Indian Express, Calcutta Statesman, Dissent and The Nation.
Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, Director of Film & Media Studies, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. Bogost is author or co-author of ten books, including Alien Phenomenology (2012)and Play Anything (2016).
Christopher Schaberg is Director of the Program in Public Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and the author of The Textual Life of Airports (2012), The End of Airports (2015), Airportness (2017), The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth (2018), Searching for the Anthropocene (2019), Pedagogy of the Depressed (2021), and Adventure: An Argument for Limits (2023), all published by Bloomsbury. He is also the founding co-editor (with Ian Bogost) of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons book series.
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