Gendered Nationalism and Material Texts: An Urdu Women’s Periodical in 1960s Pakistan

Abstract

While there exists a substantial body of work on the reformist writings and women’s periodicals of the late colonial period, this article contributes to a newer conversation extending analysis of print periodicals into the post-colonial period through a discursive and material analysis of Akhbār-e Khavātīn (Women’s Newspaper), a Karachi magazine from 1966 edited by a journalist named Mussarat Jabin. Paying attention to how a woman’s magazine was produced, collected and archived makes visible the previously invisible choices of print technicians, editors and collectors. Even though the conditions of many of these choices remain obscured, this article argues that attention to the material conditions of printing and archiving offer new avenues for reflection. Akhbār-e Khavātīn normalised women’s journalism, and also gestured towards the presence of male editors and owners, technicians who collaborated with the editors to create print periodicals, and towards the American archivists who sought to preserve the magazines for nationalist aims.