Mohammed Tabishat assisted in translation. Shami
also most gratefully acknowledges the Social Science
Research Council for accommodating her engage-
ment in the EWIC project, for financial assistance
of project funds, and for providing facilities and
logistical means for her and her research assistants.
Afsaneh Najmabadi gratefully acknowledges stud-
ent assistants Avi Rubin and Tanya Zakrevskaya.She
would, in very special terms, like to thank student
assistant Loretta Kim whose incredible researchand
administrative skills and commitment made it pos-
sible for Najmabadi to persist in the hard work of
editorial productivity. She is also grateful for the
contributions of distinguished scholars whom she
continually consulted – Yeçim Arat, Nodira Azimova,
Nilüfer ÷svan, Margaret Mills, Shahrzad Mojab,
and Nayereh Tohidi. Najmabadi would like to
recognize the contribution of Rose Glickman for
translations from Russian and French and editorial
work and Farideh Farhi for translations from Per-
sian. Cory Paulsen, Harvard University History
Department financial officer, was particularly help-
ful in processing the EWIC grants. Harvard Univer-
sity has been remarkably supportive during her
work as Associate Editor.
Jane I. Smith would like to acknowledge the sup-
port of the Hartford Seminary, and especially Alice
Horner, an independent researcher in Washington,
D.C., who worked with her as Editorial Assistant
for Sub-Saharan Africa to locate authors. Nathal
Dessing of ISIM in Holland helped Smith with
Western European sources and authors and Sheila
McDonough, Nadia Wardeh, and Celine Leduc
helped with sources and authors on Canada.
Similarly, Jacqueline Siapno had the support of
the staff and administration at the University of
Melbourne. She would also like to thank her hard-
working, brilliant, and dedicated Research Assis-
tant, Dina Afrianty, affiliated with the State Islamic
Institute in Jakarta. International Advisory Board
Editor Virginia Matheson Hooker was particularly
helpful for South East Asia consultations.
The Editors of EWIC express their gratitude to
the 42 members of the International Advisory
Editorial Board. They came from all disciplinesand
all regions of the world. Many contributed entries
to EWIC, many helped us find authors for entries,
and all lent their good names to this project.
We are most grateful to the Ford Foundation for
awarding EWIC a supplementary grant which was
even more generous than the original grant. With-
out the funding from the Ford Foundation, much of
the work and growth of EWIC would not have
been possible. Constance Buchanan and her assis-
tants, Maxine Gaddis and Irene Korenfield, shep-xxiv acknowledgments
herded the grant through the Foundation and
elicited the joint contributions and support of Ford
Foundation regional offices, including: Emma Play-
fair (Cairo), Ganesan Balachander (New Delhi),
Omotade Aina (Nairobi), Gerry Salole (Johannes-
burg), Suzanne Siskel (Indonesia), and Adhiambo
Odaga (Lagos). In addition contributions came from
the central New York offices: Constance Buchanan
and Janice Petrovich (Education, Knowledge, and
Religion Program). The Ford Foundation grant al-
lowed us to fund research assistants, buy out time,
and fund Editorial Board meetings, supplies, and
equipment. The grant made it possible for the Edi-
torial Board to come closer to reaching our stand-
ards of encyclopedic knowledge production. We are
greatly indebted to Constance Buchanan and all the
New York City and Regional Program Officers
who participated in this funding.
My personal gratitude to EWIC’s Associate
Editors, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Julie Peteet, Seteney
Shami, Jacqueline Siapno, and Jane I. Smith and
Editorial Assistant Alice Horner is profound. They
have made sacrifices for EWIC at a level none of us
could have anticipated when we began working
together in the Spring of 1999. They have brilliantly
conjoined their diverse intellectual trajectories into
a interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, transhistorical,
collaborative, feminist project from which and
through which we have all learned and grown.
They have given from their hearts and souls, and I,
more than any, have benefited from their insights,
guidance, and wisdom. Our five years of working
together, with a few more years to go, has yielded
not only a harvest of scholarship, but a bounty of
friendship.
Many others have contributed and will con-
tribute to EWIC. Hopefully, we will be able to
acknowledge as many as possible in these pages of
future volumes of EWIC. Volume III is nearing
completing of author solicitation as I write, with
Volumes IV–VI slated for completing of author
solicitations in the coming few months. We encour-
age and invite authors who are interested in con-
tributing to contact us. Our author database has
nearly 2,000 self-volunteered writers and potential
contributors to EWIC from all over the world, giving
new meaning to the idea of a global project. Never-
theless, we are certain there are scholars, graduate
students, and practitioners whom we have not reached
and urgent them to contact us ([email protected]
or ewic@ucdavis). You may also fill out a potential
author template directly on our web page http://
sjoseph.ucdavis.edu/ewic. From those who submit-
ted potential author templates and have not yet
been contacted, I request patience with our labor-