All students must read the required reading for each day.

Each student will write

three five page reaction papers on topics of their choice, due on the day that the
topic is discussed in class. On those days, students must read both the required
text and at least one recommended text.

Books for purchase:

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1988. Veiled Sentiments. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Renard, Amelie. 2014. Society of Young Women. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.

I.

Introduction
a. January 13
Introduction
b. January 16
The Muslimwoman
Required:
Mernissi, Fatima. 2001. Sex in the Western Harem, On the Western
Harem Front, Size 6: The Western Woman's Harem. In
Scheherazade Goes West, p. 11-42, 208-220. New York: Washington
Square Press.
Recommended:
1) Donadey, Anne and Huma Ahmed-Ghosh. 2008. Why Americans
Love Azar Nafisis Reading Lolita in Tehran. Signs 33(3):62-646.
2) Hoodfar, Homa. 1992. The veil in their minds and on our heads:
the persistence of colonial images of Muslim women. Resources
for Feminist Research 22(3/4):5-18.
3) Jansen, Willy. 1996. Dumb and Dull. Thamyris 3(2):237-260.
c. January 20
Introduction to Islam: the basics/ anthropological approaches/
doctrines on gender
Required:
1) Fischer Michael M.J. and Mehdi Abedi. 1990. Dialogue and
Presence/ Iqra! (Recite!): The Sounddance, the Oral, Performative
Quran, and Hajj as Primal Scene. In Debating Muslims, p. 101112, 157-172. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
2) Bowen, John. 2012. How to Think about Religions, Islam for
example. A New Anthropology of Islam, p. 1-10. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Recommended:

1) Schielke, Samuli. 2010. Second thoughts about the anthropology

of Islam, or how to make sense of grand schemes in everyday life.
Working Papers. Berlin: Zentrum Moderner Orient.
2) Euben, Roxanne. 1999. Modernity as Pathology: Analysis and
Exhortation in Signposts along the Road. In Enemy in the Mirror.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
3) Wadud, Amina. 1999. "Rights and Roles of Woman: Some
Controversies." in Qur'an and Women, p. 62-93. New York: Oxford
University Press.
II.

Classic concepts
a. January 23
Kinship
Required:
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1988. Guest and Daughter and Identity in
Relationship. In Veiled Sentiments p. 1-77. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Recommended:
1) Gellner, Ernest. 1969. The Problem. In Saints of the Atlas, p. 3569. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
2) Suad Joseph. 1994. Brother/Sister Relationships: Connectivity,
Love and Power in the Reproduction of Patriarchy in Lebanon.
American Ethnologist 21(1):50-73.
3) White, Jenny. 1994. Mothers and Sons. In Money Makes Us
Relatives, p. 71-80. Austin: University of Texas Press.
b. January 27
Honor and modesty
Required:
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1988. Honor and the Virtues of Autonomy and
Modesty, Gender and Sexuality. In Veiled Sentiments p. 78-169.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Recommended:
1) Abu-Zahra, Nadia. 1970. On the Modesty of Women in Arab
Muslim Villages: A Reply. American Anthropologist 72(5):10791088.
2) Kaya, Laura Pearl. 2010. The criterion of consistency: Womens
self-presentation at Yarmouk University, Jordan. American
Ethnologist 37(3):526-538.
3) Meeker, Michael. 1976. Meaning and Society in the near East:
Examples from the Black Sea Turks and the Levantine Arabs (I).
International Journal of Middle East Studies 7(2): 243-270.
4) vom Bruck, Gabriele. 1997. Elusive Bodies: The Politics of
Aesthics among Yemeni Elite Women. Signs 23(1): 175-214.
c. January 30

Discourse
Required:
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. The Poetry of Personal Life, Honor and
Poetic Vulnerability,
and Modesty and the Poetry of Love. In Veiled
Sentiments p.171-232 . Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Recommended:
1) Gilsenan, Michael. 1996. Joking, Play and Pressure. In Lords of
the Lebanese Marches, p. 206-230. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
2) Messick, Brinkley. 1987. Subordinate Discourse: Women, Weaving
and Gender Relations in North Africa. American Ethnologist 14(2):
210-225.
3) Shryock, Andrew. 1995. Popular Genealogical Nationalism: History
Writing and Identity among the Balqa Tribes of Jordan.
Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(2):325-357.
d. February 3
Womens Sociality
Required:
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. Ideology and the Politics of Sentiment. In
Veiled Sentiments p. 233-260. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Recommended:
1) Jansen, Willy. 1987. Cultural Mediators. In Women Without Men
p. 43-61. Leiden: Brill. (On bathhouses)
2) Meneley, Anne. 1996. Distinction and Display in the Visiting
Scene. In Tournaments of Value, p. 99-119. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
3) Nelson, Cynthia. 1974. Public and Private Politics: Women in the
Middle Eastern World. American Ethnologist 1(3): 551-63.
e. February 6
Space
Required:
Renard, Amelie. 2014. Introduction, Riyadh, a City of Closed
Spaces, Getting Around. In Society of Young Women, p. 1-84.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Note: If pressed for time, skip the Introduction.
Recommended:
1) Ghannam, Farha. 2002. Relocation and the Daily Use of Modern
Spaces. In Remaking the Modern, p. 43-66. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
2) Gilsenan, Michael. 1982. Forming and Transforming Space In
Recognizing Islam, p. 164-191. New York: St. Martins Press.
3) vom Bruck, Gabrielle. 1997. A House Turned Inside Out:
Inhabiting Space in a Yemeni City. Journal of Material Culture
2(2):139-172.
f. February 10
Class, identity and consumption
Required:

III.

Renard, Amelie. 2014. Coming Together, Breaking the Rules,

Consuming Femininities. In Society of Young Women, p. 85-158.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Note: If pressed for time, skip Breaking the Rules.
Recommended:
1) Ozyegin, Gul. 2002. The Doorkeeper, the Maid and the Tenant in
Fragments of Culture, D. Kandiyoti and A. Saktanber, eds, p. 43-72.
Rutgers: Rutgers University Press.
2) Salamandra, Christa. 2004. That Color Looks Great on You:
Consumption, Display, and Gender In A New Old Damascus, p. 4870. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
3) Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2002. The Market for Identities: Buying and
Selling Secularity and Islam. In Faces of the State, p. 78-113.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sexuality, marriage, and procreation
a. February 13
Heterosexual Sexuality /Romance
Required:
Kaya, Laura Pearl. 2009. Dating in a Sexually Segregated Society:
Embodied Practices of Online Romance in Irbid, Jordan.
Anthropological Quarterly 82(1):251-278.
Recommended:
1) Mahdavi, Pardis. 2007. Passionate uprisings: Young people,
sexuality and politics in post-revolutionary Iran. Culture, Health
and Sexuality 9(5):445-457.
2) Schade-Poulsen, Marc. Young Men in the City. In Men and
Popular Music in Algeria, p. 75-96. Austin: University of Texas Press.
3) Swedenburg, Ted. Saida Sultan/Danna International: Transgender
Pop and the Polysemiotics of Sex, Nation and Ethnicity on the
Israeli-Egyptian Border. In Mass Mediations, p. 88-120. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
b. February 20
Crimes of Honor
Required:
Wikan, Unni. 2008. Fadimes Case. In In Honor of Fadime: Murder
and Shame p. 105-172. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Recommended:
1) Abu Lughod, Lila. 2011. Seductions of the Honor Crime
differences 22(1):17-63.
2) Ewing, Katherine. 2008. The Honor Kiling. In Stolen Honor, p.
151-179. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
3) Kogaciaoglu, Dicle. 2004. The Tradition Effect: Framing Honor
Crimes in Turkey. differences 15(2):119-151.
c. February 24
Marriage, Divorce and Islamic Law
Required:

Hasso, Frances. 2010. National Families in Crisis in Consuming

Desires, p. 61-98. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Recommended:
1) Sonneveld, Nadia. 2004. The Implementation of Khul Law in
Egyptian Courts: Some Preliminary Results. Recht van de Islam
21:21-35.
2) Osanloo, Arzoo. Islamico-Civil Rights Talk: Women, Subjectivity,
and Law in Iranian Family Court. American Ethnologist 33(2):191209.
d. February 27
Gender Roles in Marriage
Required:
Rouse, Carolyn. 2004. Performing Gender: Marriage, Family and
Community. In Engaged Surrender: African-American Women and
Islam p. 152-173. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Recommended:
1) Chaudhry, Ayesha S. 2011. I wanted one thing and God wanted
another: The Dilemma of the Prophetic Example and the Quranic
Injunction on Wife Beating. Journal of Religious Ethics 39:3:416439.
2) Hoodfar, Homa. 1996. Money Management and Patterns of
Household Budgeting. In Between Marriage and the Market, p.
141-162. Berkeley: University of California Press.
3) Wikan, Unni. 1982. Portrait of a Marriage. In Behind the Veil in
Arabia, p. 245-271. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
e. March 3
Procreation
Required:
Inhorn, Marcia. 2007. Masculinity, Reproduction, and Male Infertility
surgery in the Middle East. Journal of Middle East Womens Studies
3(3):1-20
Recommended:
1) Bennett, Linda Rai. 2005. Indonesian Women, Reproductive Rights
and Islam. Antropologi Indonesia. 29(1):28-37.
2) Delaney, Carol. 1991. The Body of Knowledge. In The Seed and
the Soil, p. 25-98. Berkeley: University of California Press.
3) Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann. 2002. Babies and Boundaries. Birthing
the Nation p. 23-81. Berkeley: University of California Press.
IV.

Religious Practice
a. March 6
Noncanonical religion
Required:
Torab, Azam. 2007. The Morality of Self-Interested Exchange. In
Performing Islam p. 115-138. Leiden: Brill.

V.

Recommended:
1) Boddy, Janice. 1988. Spirits and Selves in Northern Sudan: the
Cultural Therapeutics of Trance. American Ethnologist 15(1):4-27.
2) Flueckiger, Joyce Burkhalter. 2003. Narrative Voices and
Repertoire at a Healing Crossroads in South India. The Journal of
American Folklore 116(461):249-272.
3) Schielke, Samuli. 2008. Mystic States, Motherly Virtues, Female
Participation and Leadership in an Egyptian Sufi Milieu. Journal for
Islamic Studies 28:94-126.
b. March 10
Critiques of noncanonical religion
Required:
Schielke, Samuli. 2012. Against Ambivalence. In Perils of Joy, p. 81110. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Recommended:
1) Deeb, Lara. 2006. Ashura: Authentication and Sacrifice. In An
Enchanted Modern, p. 129-164. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
2) Masquelier, Adeline. Lightning, Death and the Avenging Spirits:
Bori Values in a Muslim World. Journal of Religion in Africa 24(1):
2-51.
3) Schielke, Samuli. 2012. An Other of Modern Egypt. In Perils of
Joy, p. 111-135. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
c. March 13
Islamic Revival
Required:
Mahmood, Saba. 2001. Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile
Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival. Cultural
Anthropology 16(2):202-236.
Recommended:
1) Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2005. Managing Religion in the Name of
National Community. In Dramas of Nationhood, p. 163-192.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2) Brenner, Suzanne. 1996. Reconstructing self and society:
Javanese Muslim women and the Veil. American Ethnologist 23:
673-97.
3) Hirschkind, Charles. 2006. Cassettes and Counterpublics. In The
Ethical Soundscape, p. 105-142. New York: Columbia University
Press.
4) Macleod, Arlene. 1992. Hegemonic Relations and Gender
Resistance: The New Veiling as Accommodating Protest in Cairo.
Signs
Nationalism, Postcolonialism, Neocolonialism
a. March 24
Heteronormativity and secular nationalism
Required:

Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2005. Early Qajar and Vatan, the Beloved;

Vatan the Mother. In Women with Mustaches and Men without
Beards, p. 11-25, 97-131. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Recommended:
1) Altinay, Ayse Gul. 2004. The Myth of the Military Nation. In The
Myth of the Military Nation, p. 13-32. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
2) Ozyurek, Esra. 2006. Miniaturizing Ataturk: The commodification
of state iconography. In Nostalgia for the Modern, p. 93-124.
Durham: Duke University Press.
3) Parla, Ayse. 2001. The Honor of the State: Virginity Examinations
in Turkey. Feminist Studies 27(1):65-88.
b. March 27
Gendered citizenship, modernity and authenticity
Required:
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2005. Womens Veil and Unveil and Women
or Wives of the Nation? In Women with Mustaches and Men without
Beards, p. 132-155, 207-231. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Recommended:
1) Fanon, Franz. 1969. Algeria Unveiled. In The New Left Reader, C.
Oglesby, ed., p. 161-185. New York: Grove Press.
2) Hammani, Rema. 1996. From Immodesty to Collaboration:
Hamas, The Womens Movement, and National Identity in the
Intifada. in Political Islam. J. Beinin and J. Stork, eds. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
3) Massad, Joseph. 2001. Different Spaces as Different Times: Law
and Geography in Jordanian Nationalism. In Colonial Effects, p. 5099. New York: Columbia University Press.
c. March 30
Jihad vs. McWorld?
Required:
Hirschkind, Charles and Saba Mahmood. 2002. Feminism, the
Taliban, and the Politics of Counter Insurgency. Anthropological
Quarterly 75(2):339-354.
Recommended:
1) Fadlalla, Amal Hassan. 2011. State of Vulnerability and
Humanitarian Visibility on the Verge of Sudans Secession: Lubnas
Pants and the Transnational Politics of Rights and Dissent. Signs
37(1):159-184.
2) Mamdami, Mahmood. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A Political
Perspective on Culture and Terrorism. American Anthropologist
104(3): 766-775.
3) Mitchell, Richard. 1969. The Problem. In The Society of the
Muslim Brothers, p. 209-231. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
d. April 7
Neoliberal Islam
Required:

VI.

Atia, Mona. 2012. A Way to Paradise: Pious Neoliberalism, Islam and

Faith-Based Development. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers. 102(4):808-827.
Recommended:
1) Hafez, Sherine. 2011. [Chapter six] An Islam of Her Own. New
York: New York University Press.
2) Utvik, Bjorn Olav. 2003. The Modernizing Force of Islamism. in
Modernizing Islam, J.L. Esposito and F. Burgat, eds. New Jersey:
Rutgers University Press.
Turkey, Indonesia (2)
Identity Politics
a. April 10
(Islamic) Feminism
Required:
Moallem, Minoo. 2005. Transnationalism, Feminism and
Fundamentalism. In Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister p.
155-184. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Recommended:
1) Adamson, Clarissa. 2007. Gendered Anxieties: Islam, Womens
Rights, and Moral Hierarchy in Java. Anthropological Quarterly
80(1):5-37.
2) Hammer, Juliane. 2008. Identity, Authority, and Activism:
American Muslim Women Approach the Quran. The Muslim World
98(4):443-464.
3) Sievking, Nadine. 2007. We dont want equality; we want to be
given our rights: Muslim women negotiating global development
concepts in Senegal. Afrika Spectrum 42(1):29-48.
b. April 14
LGBT Identity
Required:
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2013. Professing Selves. In Professing Selves,
p. 275-301. Durham: Duke University Press.
Recommended:
1) Massad, Joseph. 2002. Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International
and the Arab World. Public Culture 14(2): 361-385.
2) Merabet, Sofian. 2014. Queer habitus: bodily performance and
queer ethnography in Lebanon. Identities: Global Studies in
Culture and Power 21(5):516-531.
3) Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2013. Murderous Passions, Deviant
Insanities. In Professing Selves, p. 75-119. Durham: Duke
University Press.
c. April 17
Ethnic and sectarian conflict
Required:
Ring, Laura. 2006. Introduction: The Zenana Revisited, Tension.
In Zenana, p. 1-39, 60-102. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Recommended:

1) Helms, Elissa. 2008. East and West Kiss: Gender, Orientalism, and
Balkanism in Muslim-Majority Bosnia-Herzegovina. Slavic Review
67(1):88-119.
2) Peleikis, Anja. 2001. Shifting Identities, Reconstructing
Boundaries. The Case of a Multi-Confessional Locality in Post-War
Lebanon. Die Welt des Islams 41(3):400-429.
3) Sen, Atreyee. 2009. Inventing womens history: Female valor,
martial queens, and right-wing story-tellers in the Bombay slums.
FocaalEuropean journal of Anthropology 54: 33-48.
4) White, Jenny. 2012. No Mixing. Muslim Nationalism and the New
Turks. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
d. April 21
Gender and violence
Required:
Ring, Laura. 2006. Anger, Intimacy. In Zenana, p. 103-169.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Recommended:
1) Altinay, Ayse Gul. 2004. Women and the Myth: The Worlds First
Woman Combat Pilot. In The Myth of the Military Nation. New York:
Palgrave.
2) Fischer-Tahir, Andrea. 2012. Gendered Memories and
Masculinities: Kurdish Peshmerga on the Anfal Campaign in Iraq.
Journal of Middle East Womens Studies 8(1): 92-114.
3) Hasso, Frances. Discursive and Political Deployments by/of the
2002 Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers/Martyrs. Feminist
Review 81:23-51.
VII.

Views of Islam in the West

a. April 24
Western Muslim identities in the shadow of the War on Terror
Required:
Ewing, Katherine. 2008. Between Modernity and Tradition:
Negotiating Stigmatization. In Stolen Honor, p. 94-123. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Recommended:
1) Cainkar, Louise. 2009. Gendered Nativism, Boundary Setting, and
Cultural Sniping: Women as Embodiments of the Perceived Cultural
Threat of Islam. In Homeland Insecurity, p. 190-228. New York:
Russell Sage.
2) Dadi, Iftikhar. 2008. Shirin Neshats Photographs as Postcolonial
Allegories. Signs 34(1): 125-150.
3) Ozyurek, Esra. 2010. German Converts to Islam and their
Ambivalent Relations with Immigrant Muslims. In
Islamophobia/Islamophila, A. Shryock, ed, p. 172-192. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
4) Shryock

b. April 28
Secularism
Required: Scott, Sexularism
Recommended: Stuff on Turkey, veil in Europe