Transnational discourse on Islam and gender has been a highly contested area of debate.  Lila Abu-Lughod criticizes the notion of the existence of a “Muslim woman” because it is necessary to first define women’s historical , economic, and social status before making any statement applying to them.  Our panel follows Abu-Lughod in an effort to combat essentializing.  While Abu-Lughod primarily analyzes sociological accounts, our panel will investigate literary archetypes, images, and stereotypes of Muslim women, both from texts originating within the Muslim world, and from texts whose authors come to Islam as outsiders.   We will focus on how cultural and religious identity is constructed in these memoirs, novels, short stories and poems.

     Much criticism has examined how Muslim women have been cast as signifiers of the relationship between woman and nation;  we are particularly interested in how literary representations have resisted this trope, as well as other transnational stereotypes, and have re-introduced complexities  erased by political ideology.  By attending to the relationship between the aesthetics of representation and the political, we enter the dialogue about the sources of gendered Islamophobia and discrimination.  

     Abstracts representing a variety of  methodological approaches are welcome.  Papers that are comparative— that focus on issues across authors, countries, or comparisons with other racisms/ stereotypes are particularly encouraged.

     Some of the questions we hope to explore in this panel include, but are not limited to:

• Living within laïcité : tensions within the debate on gender, Islam and difference;
• How perceptions and roles change across the generational divide/ the ways the generations inhabit norms differently;
• Islamic symbols and metaphors in texts on Muslim family life;
• Agency, identity and the construction of social identity;
• The construction of morality and the sacred in transnational discourse on Islam and gender;
• The female elite within Islam: views on intersectionality.

Please Submit abstracts via NeMLA's site through the url below:

URL https:// www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/login