Week 10

November 3          Postcolonial Feminist Critiques, Part 1: Veiling in Islam

Read:   

·      Homar Hoodfar, “The Veil in their Minds and on Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women” Resources for Feminist Research, Toronto Vol 22. Issue ¾, (1993).

·      Lailatul Fitriyah. “Can we stop talking about the ‘hijab’?: Islamic Feminism, Intersectionality, and the Indonesian Muslim Female Migrant Workers”, p. 401-405 from Intro to Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Oxford (2021).

                        Postcolonial Feminist Critiques, Part 2: Female Circumcision

Read:   

·      Fuambai Ahmadu, “Ain’t I a Woman, Too? Challenging Myths of Sexual Dysfunction in Circumcised Women,” 278-310

·      Michela Fusaschi, “Gendered genital modifications in critical anthropology: from discourses on FGM/C to new technologies in the sex/gender system” IJIR: Your Sexual Medicine Journal (2023) 35:6–15; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00542-y

Due: Engaged Learning Response: Find two recent articles from a major news source about Muslim women.  What words and images frame the stories (i.e. does veiling figure prominently in the story)?  What is the intended audience and purpose of the story?  Whose voices are experts in telling the story?  When framed through an Islamic feminist analysis or intersectional analysis does the story change?

In Class Work:  As discussed in lecture and in article below, we are seeing rates of male circumcision decline markedly in the USA.

Circumcision: the ultimate parenting dilemma

What do you think of the argument relating so called "female circumcision" to "male circumcision"?

In class we will watch this brief clip: 

In class debate--what aspects of arguments over circumcision did you find most persuasive: pleasure, disease transmission, cultural, religious, aesthetic, rights/bodily integrity, etc?