"The (Muslim) Woman Question"
Competing Representations, Contested Futures

9th Annual Critical Islamic Reflections Conference

Yale University
April 10, 2010

*Extended Submission Deadline: February 1, 2010*

http://www.yale.edu/cir <https://webmail.vt.edu/horde/util/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yale.edu%2Fcir&Horde=1011a4040e289f4a0081bd7cabb9a7f9>

Yale's *Critical Islamic Reflections* committee is pleased to announce an
extension in the submission deadline for our 9th annual conference, "The
(Muslim) Woman Question: Competing Representations, Contested Futures."  The
new deadline for the submission of abstracts is Monday, February 1, 2009. All
proposals received by this date will be considered for presentation at Yale.

This interdisciplinary forum will explore the politics of representation
vis-à-vis women and gender in Islam and interrogate how representations of and
by Muslim women may influence political futures.

Description and Aims of Conference:

As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, global media continue
to traffic in representations of Muslim women, while representations produced by
Muslim women are gaining international traction. Contemporary discussions around
the role of Islam in foreign and domestic policy, civil society and democracy,
war, globalization, human rights, and the private sphere increasingly hinge
upon the semiotics of gender.  However, despite the race to represent - and
through representation to understand - the Muslim woman, prevailing debates on
gender and Islam remain trapped in neo-Orientalist discourses and occluded by
political ideologies worldwide.

As symbols of both oppression and liberation, Muslim women have historically
been agents of political change and subjects of restrictive state policies in
the West as well as in Muslim-majority societies.  Lively religious debates on
gender and the challenges of modernity prevail at the confessional level within
Muslim communities. These debates are recast into objects of consumption by
audiences unacquainted with the breadth and complexity of the Islamic
scriptural tradition.

This conference explores how representations of Muslim women within visual and
material cultures and in historical and contemporary literatures inform popular
imagination and public policy on Islam even as they are influenced by them.
Presentations will explore not only how Muslim women have been represented and
have engaged in practices of representation, but will critically examine the
structures of power such representations may serve, subvert, create, negotiate,
or complicate.

This conference has four central goals: 1) to further interdisciplinary
discussions about women and Islam beyond the discursive plateau of American
popular culture; 2) to anchor that discussion in particular representations,
their politics and histories; 3) to explore how religious identities are formed
alongside gendered ones; and 4) to explore how representations of the Muslim
woman shape political activism and religious practice.

We welcome papers from all disciplines on topics including but not limited to:

- Invocations of Tradition in Contemporary Gender Debates

- Muslim Feminisms and Transnational Activism

- Muslim Women in Politics and Media Representations

- Mystico-Philosophical Conceptions of Femininity and Masculinity

- Sexuality, Reproduction, and the Body

- Depictions and Self-Depictions of Muslim Women

- Historical Perspectives on “The Woman Question”


*Proposal Submission Guidelines*


Please submit a 250-word abstract and author information to
yalecir@gmail.com <conference@cir.org>by February 1, 2010.  Those selected
to attend will be notified no later than March 1, 2010.  For questions and
further inquiries, please contact the Academic Chair, perin.gurel@yale.edu