Issue Editors: Sabiha Allouche, Fida Adely and Hesham Sallam

MER issue 314, “New Gender Frontlines,” takes stock of the role gender plays in the present political moment—one of ongoing genocidal war, US repression of political dissent and border violence. The issue borrows its title from a 2013 issue of Middle East Report (268), which explored the relationship between gender and revolution during and immediately after the popular uprisings. More than 10 years later, women and men across the region are confronted with the consolidation of nation states, resurgence of counterrevolutionary violence and hardening of borders. Now, as then, our contributors make clear that gender is not incidental but central to political organizing and participation, violence and resistance and the textures of everyday life. As the roundtable with Deniz Kandiyoti, Judith Tucker, Mounira Charrad and Suad Joseph reveals, questions of state power have always been marked by gender, class and other differences. The rest of our contributors take up these analytical tools, asking what gender can tell us about political mobilization in Sudan, genocidal violence in Gaza, deportation regimes in Turkey and the United States, emergent masculinities in Syria, democratic politics in Iran and more. What emerges are today’s gender frontlines—sites of violence but also spaces of struggle and imagination.