Amanda Rogers

Politics, Gender and the Art of Religious Authority in North Africa: Moroccan Women’s Henna Practice

This project analyzes the cultural and political symbolism of henna in contemporary Morocco. Henna dye is applied on religious occasions throughout North Africa—yet only in Morocco does this feminine art symbolize a “nationalized” Islam. This project contends that Moroccan henna’s explicitly spiritual significance is grounded in local interpretations of orthodoxy and explores the mobilization of this art form as a contested emblem of social protest and political legitimacy in a climate of unrest.

Amanda E. Rogers is currently a second-year Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at UW-Madison (Ph.D., Emory University, 2013). Amanda is a specialist in visual rhetoric, digital media, and critical theory of art and culture in the greater Islamic world. She is an academic, journalist, artist, and political analyst whose work appears in numerous forums, including the BBC, Al-Jazeera, Aslan Media, and The New York Times. Her forthcoming monograph, Semiotics of Rebellion From Morocco to Egypt: Advertising Revolution and Marketing Allegiance (advance contract with University of Pennsylvania Press, International Relations and Public Policy Series), focuses on the critical use of politicized cultural discourse for international alliances, regional stability, and intra nation-state image warfare.