About the Fall Institute

  • The 2007 Fall Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston) examines the complex and rich terrain of Islam to engage it as a shifting landscape characterized by continuous negotiations of power and practice. The participants include 20 competitively selected U.S. and international scholars as well as 10 invited speakers.

    A principal objective of the institute will be to dismantle the dualistic or binary framework that has come to dominate most discussions in the West of Islam and the Islamic world; a central component of this mode of thinking is the opposition between secularism and religiosity, buttressed by the unquestioning coupling of democracy with secularism, religiosity with oppression.

    In seeking to challenge these uninterrogated assumptions, we posit that the critical perspective of feminist analysis provides a particularly valuable window into the many struggles internal to Islam and its changing dynamics over time. Through a focus on feminist movements in the Islamic world, we hope to illuminate the intersecting influences of economic/cultural globalization, patriarchy, and imperialism. We seek to examine the many dimensions of Islam: its capacity as an emancipatory force for understanding the world, as an impetus for political and psychological self-determination, and as a stimulus for cultural productions, and a foundation for identity.

Free and open to the public. Please join us!

*Conference Attendees with Disabilities :  Anyone requiring disability-related accommodations in order to fully participate in this event should contact Jennifer Howard by email at jennifer.howard003@umb.edu or by phone at 508-685-5988 as soon as possible.

 

The 2007 Fall Institute is made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation.