Call for Papers - Submission Guidelines

By engaging Islam through a feminist lens, we hope to challenge inadequately interrogated assumptions and modes of thinking that posit secularism and democracy in opposition to religiosity and oppression. The critical perspective of feminist analysis provides a particularly valuable window into the many struggles internal to Islam, its changing dynamics over time, and the intersecting influences of economic/cultural globalization, imperialism and patriarchal power structures in the lives of individuals, communities, and nations. This five-day institute will be organized by the following broad questions:

  1. Why study Islam through the lens of feminisms?
  2. What is the relationship among Islamic feminisms as social movements, as quests for personal identity, as forces of resistance?
  3. What are the exigencies confronting Islamic feminisms particularly in the realms of democratic politics, cultural productions, and social policy? How are these exigencies negotiated?
  4. What is the relation between state structure, its move towards democratization in a number of countries, and Islamic feminisms? How have state policies shaped the rise, content, and form of feminist resistance? How have they influenced, or not, the articulation between Islam and feminism?

Themes may include but are not limited to:

Defining Islamic Feminisms
  • Faith based feminisms/secular feminisms
  • Feminist interpretations of religious texts
  • Challenging imperial feminism through engaging national, post-colonial, and transnational contexts
  • Islamic masculinities, subjectivities, agency
Social Movements, Social Transformations
  • Resistance and occupation
  • Democracy, civil society, and women's groups
  • Political economy and globalization
  • Faith based tribunals/arbitration/courts
  • Legal Reform and women's rights
Identities, Citizenship, Resistance
  • Nationalism, sexuality, "War on Terror"
  • Immigration
  • International Law and Human Rights Regimes
  • State Violence and its links to regimes of race/gender/nations/sexuality
  • Coalition building, transnational solidarity practices
Challenging Hegemonic Representations of Islam, Muslims, and the West
  • Islamic feminist engagements with creative expressions of visual arts, cinema, literature
  • Teaching, pedagogy and global education
  • Colonial discourses, post-colonial modernities

Papers from the Institute will be published in a special issue of the International Feminist Journal of Politics in Fall 2008. Applicants must submit a two-page outline/proposal, including an abstract, and a separate statement of interest in promoting understanding of Islam and the Islamic world in his/her academic institution.

In your statement of interest, please address the following five questions.:

  1. What is the central question/argument/idea that you would like to explore in your paper? Why is it important?
  2. Why are you interested in attending this institute?
  3. How are you currently engaged in the issues posted by the institute?
  4. What, if any, are the current initiatives on your campus to discuss Islam and the Islamic world?
  5. How will you use the outcomes of this institute on your campus? Do you anticipate institutional support for your plans?

Please email submissions to: Jennifer.Howard003@umb.edu

Or mail to:  2007 Fall Institute: Engaging Islam, Attention: Jennifer Howard, University of Massachusetts Boston, College of Liberal Arts, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, Massachusetts 02125

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.