Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties: Global Perspectives on Marriage, Crisis, and Nation - Paperback

by Kristin Celello (Editor), Hanan Kholoussy (Editor)

Since the late nineteenth century, fears that marriage is in crisis have reverberated around the world. This volume explores this phenomenon, asking why people of various races, classes, and nations frequently seem to be fretting about marriage. Each of the chapters analyzes a specific time and place during which proclamations of marriage crisis have dominated public discourse, whether in late imperial Russia, 1920s India, mid-century France, or present-day Iran. Collectively, the chapters reveal how diverse individuals have deployed the institution of marriage to talk not only about intimate relationships, but also to understand the nation, its problems, and various socioeconomic and political transformations.

Author Biography

Kristin Celello is Associate Professor of History at Queens College, City University of New York, and the author of Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States.