WUNRN
Call for Papers - Women, Leadership & Mosques: Changes in
Contemporary Islamic Authority
Conference & Edited Volume
University of Oxford, St Antony's College, May 8-9 2009
Contact - Hilary Kalmbach: hilary.kalmbach@sant.ox.ac.uk
We
are seeking proposals for fresh papers to be presented at a small,
publication-driven conference on female religious authority in the modern
Islamic world at Oxford University in May 2009. Please submit
500-750 word
abstracts by 31 December 2008 to hilary.kalmbach@sant.ox.ac.uk
The ability of women to exercise various types of Islamic religious
authority has increased significantly since the early twentieth century,
especially during the last two or three decades. Existing scholarship,
however, has focused overwhelmingly on certain facets of this increase, in
particular female leadership through Sufi groups and attempts to reinterpret
Islam to accommodate gender equality, whether through an explicitly
'feminist' framework or not.
Missing from the literature is serious analysis of the growing acceptance of
women within mosques and madrasas, spaces which have long been centres of
Islamic authority but from which women have traditionally been excluded or
marginalised. The acceptance of female leadership and activities in these
spaces is a significant change from historic practices, signalling the
mainstream acceptance of (some forms of) female Islamic leadership. The
nature, dynamics and scope of female leadership activities within mosques
vary widely, with differences between (and within) North Africa, the Middle
East, South and Southeast Asia, and diaspora communities in North America
and Europe.
Very few scholars have attempted to apply the exciting work on changing
structures of Islamic authority to the activities of women, despite the fact
that these changes are what have enabled women to take a much more active
role within the religious sphere. Crucially, a fully-contextualised
account
of the activities of these groups often requires time-intensive fieldwork,
making it difficult for a single author to consider multiple contexts in a
monograph.
This conference will energize scholarship on Muslim women by bringing
together scholars with geographically-diverse expertise to focus
specifically on female leadership in mosques and madrasas and the structure
of religious authority that enable or limit these activities.
The papers presented at this conference will investigate
-- how women active in mosques and madrasas construct their authority as
leaders,
-- the impact they have on their students and the wider community, and
-- how they use public space in mosques and madrasas,
and present the rich social, political, economic and historical contexts of
these activities.
Women draw on a wide variety of sources - scholarly credentials, charisma,
family ties, teaching experience - to construct their authority as leaders
and teachers. This authority is not limitless, however, and both the
constraints placed upon their activities and their ability to influence
society are important parts of the overall picture.
Scholars already attending include
-- Maria Jaschok (Oxford University), a specialist on China,
-- Nelly Van Doorn (Valparaiso University), a specialist on Indonesia, and
-- Catharina Raudvere (University of Copenhagen), whose current work focuses
on Bosnia.
TIME FRAME:
-- 31 December 2008: ABSTRACTS DUE (500-750 words, sent to
hilary.kalmbach@sant.ox.ac.uk
-- 10 January 2009: Participants notified by email
-- Friday 8 May - Saturday 9 May, 2009: Conference at St Antony's College,
University of Oxford
Papers will be circulated beforehand to maximize time for discussion and
exchange of ideas. Authors will have the option of resubmitting papers
after the conference for publication. Funding to cover travel expenses
will
unfortunately be limited and applicants are strongly encouraged to seek
assistance from their home institutions.
WHO WE ARE:
The conference is being organized by Hilary Kalmbach, Masooda Bano and
Walter Armbrust.
-- Masooda Bano is an ESRC postdoctoral fellow at Oxford's Department of
International Development and has an article in the Journal of Islamic
Studies (18:1, 2007) as well as a forthcoming monograph on Pakistani
madrasas.
-- Hilary Kalmbach is an Oxford doctoral student whose master's thesis on
the religious authority of female mosque instructors in Syria won the 2007
BRISMES Graduate Article Prize and was subsequently published in the British
Journal for Middle Eastern Studies (35:1, 2008). Her current work
includes
looking at the historical dimensions of this phenomenon.
-- Walter Armbrust is Hourani Fellow and University Lecturer in Modern
Middle Eastern Studies, as well as the resident anthropologist at Oxford's
Middle East Centre. He looks at structures of authority in his work on
patriarchy in twentieth and twenty-first-century Egypt.
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