Book Review: Judith Surkis, Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2019.

Abstract

Judith Surkis’ study on sex, law, and sovereignty in French Algeria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries starts with a list of illustrations, a section in which she acknowledges universities (Rutgers, Brown, Princeton, and Harvard) and people—family, friends, colleagues but also graduate students—who have helped her publish this book, a note on translation and transliteration and an all-important map of 1834 Alger. The note on translation and transliteration indicates that the current book is based on the colonial archive of French Algeria.