Master Class: Muslim Feminisms and Women’s Diasporic Writing held by Susan Friedman between 26-30 January, 2015

This year this traditional one-week long course is taught by Susan Stanford Friedman, Virginia Woolf Professor of English and Women’s Studies and Sally Mead Hands Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in the US. 

With a focus on Muslim women’s diasporic writing, the class will examine the significance of religion for feminist theory in the context of heightened migration of peoples across the globe in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Drawn from her current book project, Sisters of Scheherazade: Religion, Diaspora, and Muslim Women’s Writing, the course explores the spectrum of Muslim feminisms (from secular to Islamist), examines the impact of migration and diaspora on gender and Muslim identity, and uses intersectional analysis to see how religion interacts with such other identity categories as gender, race, class, sexuality, national origin, and so forth. The importance of Scheherazade (the frame character from A Thousand and One Nights), for Muslim feminists will be given consideration. The class will explore a range of views about feminism in Muslim cultures, from attacks on it as “Western,” to the development of Muslim feminisms based in a rereading of the Qur’an, to the existence of Sufi feminisms, and to the significance of secular Muslim feminisms. The legacies of colonialism, the entanglement of modernity and tradition in all societies, the issue of veiling as symptomatic of “East/West” relations, sexuality and the family, and exile and religion are some of the topics to be examined. Throughout, it will be considered how to balance questions of identity, agency, oppression, religious affiliation, and religious practice as women of Muslim background variously write about them. Course readings for assignment and discussion in lecture mix feminist theory, poetry, fiction, and graphic memoir.