Tuesday, March 4, 2025 4:30 PM (ET)
Dr. Melinda Lemke716-645-1090malemke@buffalo.edu
Please join us on Friday, May 2 in the Buffalo Room (Capen 10) at 3:30pm for the lecture.
Lecturer: Dr. Ayesha Khurshid, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Florida State University
Title: Education, Gender, and Muslim Womanhood: Ethnographies of a Punjabi Muslim Community from Pakistan and a Maya Muslim Community from Mexico
Abstract: Muslim womanhood continues to be an ideological battleground for different political, social, and religious movements not only in Muslim countries but also in different Western contexts. The educational level of Muslim women is often mobilized as a measure to determine the “progress” of Muslim communities. This presentation examines how Muslim women from two different geographical, national, and cultural sites, a rural Punjabi Muslim community in Pakistan and an Indigenous Maya Muslim community in Mexico, make sense of and perform what it means to be educated Muslim women in their specific contexts. Though focusing on lived experiences, it highlights how the hybridity of the cultural and Islamic identities of these two groups of women, as well as their connections with their environment, shape the nature, value, and relevance of education for them. This presentation invites educational scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to explore the conceptual and methodological approaches, especially decolonizing methodologies, needed to engage with the multidimensional and context-specific identities of people who often become subjects of national and international educational reforms.
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