Categories : Field-specific (academic)

Empowering Muslim Women in History, Literature and the Arts

University of Manchester

“Empowerment through Rituals: Reconsidering Female Agency in Contemporary Islam”

By Professor Yafa Shanneik (University of Lund, Sweden)

Wednesday 11 May 2022, 17:00 GMT on Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/93390176851

Abstract:
The presentation is based on my book The Art of Resistance in Islam, which discusses the role diasporic Shi‘i communities in Europe play in shaping women’s acts of transnational resistance in the Middle East. It particularly examines how self-inflicted pain practices on the female body become a tool for the aesthetisation of gender politics. It discusses how such embodied practices contribute to a new understanding of female agency and empowerment within contemporary resistance movements. Shiʿi women claim agency by providing new interpretations of Shiʿi sources that allow them to participate in religious rituals that have traditionally been preserved exclusively for men. Through self-inflicted pain practices, such as self-flagellation or walking on hot coal, women are able to challenge gender-based religious boundaries. It thereby provides a new approach to researching gender agency within contemporary Islamic movements, which use sensory experiences articulated through the female body to de-stabilise existing gender power dynamics in the Middle East. The book equally challenges area studies boundaries by being based on extensive ethnographic research in both the Middle East and Europe.

BRAIS 2022: Provisional Programme
Papers of potential interest to Shii News readers:
(for fuller information, see the above link to the programme)

Torsten Hylen (Dalarna University) Three times Karbalāʾ: comparing early accounts of the death of al-Ḥusayn
Siti Sarah Muwahidah (University of Edinburgh) Shi’i Women’s Digital Da’wa in Indonesia: Nurturing New Female Authorities And Bridging Sectarian Divides
Oliver Scharbrodt (Lund University) Contesting Ritual Practices in Twelver Shiism: Modernism, Sectarianism and the Politics of Self-Flagellation (taṭbīr)
Faezeh Izadi (University of Calgary) Religion in the face of the modern world: A case study of Radical Life Extension and Shia Islam
Murtaza Shakir (Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah) The Beseeched Burial: Reflections on the Historical Events Associated with the Shrine of Al-Sayyida Nafīsa in Cairo
Muhammad Tajri (Al-Mahdi Institute) Evolution of Shīʿī Taqlīd on UK University Campuses
Olav Elgvin (University of Bergen) For the Greater Good: Common Goals and Institutional Sunni-Shi‘a Cooperation in Norway
Teemu Pauha (University of Helsinki) Mut‘a marriage, online boundary-work, and the social psychology of Sunni-Shi‘a relations
Elvire Corboz (University of Edinburgh) and Emanuelle Degli-Esposti (University of Cambridge) From the margins to the centre: Shi‘a-led grassroots organisations and the shaping of an inclusive Muslim identity in Britain
Jesper Petersen (Copenhagen University) Observing the Sunni-Shia divide in fieldwork
Lucy Deaon (University of Edinburgh) Karbala on Stage: Retelling the Martyrdom of Imam Husain in the Iranian Taʿziyeh

“Fashioning an Empire: Safavid Textiles from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha”
Conversation with the Curator
Join us for a conversation between HIAA President, Prof. Kishwar Rizvi (Professor in the History of Art, Islamic Art and Architecture, Yale University) and Dr. Massumeh Farhad (Senior Associate Director for Research, Chief Curator and The Ebrahimi Family Curator of Persian, Arab, and Turkish Art, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art) about the ongoing exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Fashioning an Empire: Safavid Textiles from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, (December 18, 2021 – May 15, 2022).
Friday, May 6, 2022
12 pm EST on Zoom
Register here