CFP for an Edited Volume: Muslim Who? (Re)Making Gendered Identities

Editors: Iqra Shagufta Cheema and Sabah Firoz Uddin

Project Description:

In this edited volume, we invite scholarly essays that examine the relationship between gender and Muslim identities as it is (re)presented in political spaces, visual cultures, and sociopolitical discourses. Some of the questions this volume seeks to examine are:

• How is the idea of gender mobilized to in/de/form Muslim identities, both within and outside Muslim communities?

• In what ways do Muslims contest, resist, and negotiate their gendered identities in relation with the proscribed notions of Muslimness?

• How do conversations about gender and its performance influence and/or are influenced by the dominant religious and cultural discourses, both in the Global North and the Global South?

Political spaces and cultural conversations are rife with anti-Muslim sentiments as well as negotiation of Muslim identity itself (Abdul Khabeer 2016, Shehabuddin 2021). Muslim women and non-binary individuals are particularly subject to these identitarian interrogations of who is a Muslim. However, rather than retreating from these spaces and conversations, they are increasingly engaging in acts of resistance that, in turn, trigger gendered and racialized reactions (Bouclin 2013, Ali 2022, Islam 2023). This volume brings together scholars who center gender in their analysis of Muslim-led counterpublics to illuminate how Muslims are negotiating religious, cultural and ideological (re)presentations of gender in public and private spaces (Asen 2000). Overall, this volume examines the role of gender – as it functions and is understood within and outside of Muslim communities – in the negotiation of Muslim identities in the global context.

We particularly invite contributions from minority Muslim sects, identities, and communities. Please email your 250 word long abstracts and a short bio to gender.muslim@gmail.com.

Suggested topics for chapters include but are not limited to the following:

• Muslims beyond the gender binary

• Piety and its inward and outward performance

• Performing Muslim masculinities and femininities

• Muslim feminism and Muslim feminist question

• Feminism and Muslim masculinities

• Gendered Muslim lives on social media

• Visual cultures and Muslim counterpublics

• Queer and racialized representation of Muslims

• LGBTQ+ activism

• Sartorial practices (hijab, modest fashion, and niqab etc.)

• Black Lives Matter and Intersectional feminisms

• Religious Authorities and (Re)constructing Cyber Islam

• Rise of the Muslim Manosphere

• Anti-Muslim violence as it shapes Muslim identities

Projected Timetable:

May 31, 2024: Submit 200-250 words long formal abstract and bio 

June 15, 2024: Response to Submissions

November 30, 2024: Submit 6000-7000 words long chapter

Late 2025-early 2026: Tentative date of publication

Please send any questions to gender.muslim@gmail.com

Works Cited: 

Abdul Khabeer, S. Muslim Cool: Race, religion, and hip-hop in the United States. New York, N.Y.: NYU Press, 2016.

Ali, Kecia. Tying the knot: A Feminist/Womanist Guide to Muslim Marriage in America. Boston University Press, 2022. 

Asen, Robert. “Seeking the ‘counter,’ in counterpublics.” Communication Theory, vol. 10, no. 4, 2000, pp. 424-446.

Bouclin, Suzzane. “YouTube and Muslim Women’s Legal Subjectivities” Oñati Socio-Legal Series. vol. 3, no. 7,  2013, pp. 1158-1183.

Ghumkhor, Sahar  and Hizer Mir. “A Crisis of Masculinity? The West’s Cultural Wars in the Emerging Muslim Manosphere.” ReOrient, vol. 7, no. 2, 2022. Online.

Islam, Inaash. “When Modesty Meets Aesthetic Labor: Islamic Modesty as Antithetical to Muslimah Social Media Influencers’ Aesthetic Labor.” Feminist Formations, vol. 35, no. 2, 2023, pp 174-195.

Morey, Peter. & Yaqin Amina. Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and representation after 9/11. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Rozehnal, Robert, ed. Cyber Muslims: Mapping Islamic Digital Media in the Internet Age. Bloomsbury, 2022.

Shehabuddin, Elora. Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism. University of California Press, 2021.

Ternikar, Farha and Dana M. Olwan. “Overview: History: Muslim Americans: North America.” Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, edited by Suad Joseph, Brill, 2023.

Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture, vol. 14, no. 1, 2002, pp. 49-90.

Zine, Jasmine & Lisa K. Taylor. “Introduction: The Contested Imaginaries of Reading Muslim Women and Muslim Women Reading Back.” Muslim women, transnational feminism and the ethics of pedagogy:Contested imaginaries in post-9/11 cultural practice, edited by L. K. Taylor, & J. Zine, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2016, pp. 1-22.