HNRS 390/SOCI 390*
Gender, Islam, and Globalization
Fall 2006

Instructor: Dr. Erin Kenny
Office: Burnham 334
873-7226
ekenny@drury.edu
Hours: M 10 – 11; T 11 – 12; W 10 – 11; R 11 – 12; and by appointment

Course Description:

This course fills a Minorities and Indigenous Studies credit, and focuses on the lives of contemporary Muslims around the world, the factors informing social constructions of gender within Islamic thought, and questions of Muslim women's status in a globalizing world.

One fifth of the world's population is Muslim. Following brief introductions to the study of Islam and gender, this course reviews and discusses ethnographic and literary texts to compare the experiences of Muslim men and women around the world. Case studies of Muslim households drawn from the Middle East, Egypt, West Africa, and Indonesia explore key issues significant to Muslims today, including the construction of masculinity and femininity, veiling and seclusion, kinship, household economics, fasting, pilgrimage, violence, health, fertility, and non-western feminist activism. The final section of the course explores the implications of the processes of globalization and the (re)emergence of Muslim feminist thought to dialogue about issues related to peace and war, gendered identity, ethics, human rights, and cultural relativism.

Texts:

Course Packet, available at the Drury Bookstore

Course Evaluation:

 This course involves roughly the amount of reading as a graduate level course. You must keep up with the reading and engage actively to achieve an “A” in this course. 

1. Reading Facilitation 10%
2. Paper One 15%
3. Active Engagement 20%
4. Reading Journal 25%
5. Final Paper 30%

This course can also qualify for credit as WGST 390/MEST 390/RELI 390 – see me for more information.

Grade Determination:

According to the Drury University Academic Catalog , grades are determined on a standard 10-point scale (A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, F). Under very rare (documented) circumstance, I will assign a grade of “I” for incomplete work.

Please understand (and refer to page 27 - 29 of the Academic Catalog ): “a grade of C represents satisfactory level of performance that can be expected of any Drury student who gives a reasonable amount of time, effort and attention to the work of the course. Such satisfactory performance should include familiarity with the concept of the course as shown by an acceptable mastery of the information, concepts or skills involved and regular participation in the work of the class.”

The Academic Catalog continues to suggest that the grade of “B” demonstrates “excellence” and the grade of “A” demonstrates “conspicuous excellence.”

It is, of course, very difficult to quantify mastery of knowledge, but please understand that this is not a course where the grade of “A” will be readily available without “conspicuous excellence” on your part. This means that the entire group, the whole class, notices your strong efforts to consider, weigh, analyze, and synthesize course materials. (See the section below on “Active Engagement.”)

Reading Facilitation:

Starting in the third or fourth week of the course, each student will take a turn “leading” the other students in the daily reading(s). Student facilitators will be expected to be prepared with questions and possibly handouts to encourage discussion of the materials assigned for that day. Student facilitators should also make efforts to provide synthesis and critical analysis: they should be able to refer meaningfully to previous readings and to introduce areas of dissent, clarification, or discussion.

More details on effective facilitation techniques will follow.

Paper One:
The first paper of the semester will be a reaction paper, where I will ask you to respond to a set of readings. I expect the reaction paper will be between five to eight typed pages, in 12 point font, with 1 inch margins.

Typically, a reaction paper includes about one-third summary and two-thirds critical analysis. I will look for episodes of critical thinking and synthesis in your paper to award the highest grades. I will not expect a “Works Cited” page for this assignment.

At the time of the assignment, a rubric will also be handed out to help you to outline, organize, and pace your paper.

I will accept rewrites of this paper. 

* Active Engagement:

The success of this course depends upon your participation and engagement with the readings, other students, and the instructor. This means you will have the readings and homework done BEFORE you come to class, and you will be prepared to initiate a topic for class discussion from time to time through the semester. I expect that you will spend two to three hours preparing independently for each class by reviewing the material to be covered, preparing reading notes, and outlining some thoughtful questions for clarification or discussion. I also hope that you will spend “face time” with me outside of class.

Here's the thing: you're an adult and this is an honors course. This syllabus is our contract: you're choosing to be here. All students in this class are encouraged to take an active role in discussions, and we will work toward creating a respectful learning community. If you are quiet or shy, simply make a commitment to work on taking risks and managing your anxiety; those who tend to dominate discussion may need to work on restraint, or think about ways to engage other students in the course material. Attendance will not be recorded, but I will make notations in my record book to discover who is consistently prepared and able to engage the readings. As a rough guideline, if you participate substantively at least once a week during the course, you should gain points toward the Active Engagement section of the grade. Please, however, do make every effort to be punctual to class. Chronic tardiness is disruptive and may cause a lowering of your participation grade.

A final (probably unnecessary) note on class etiquette: please remember that this is a university environment, and please behave accordingly. Recall that by signing up for this course, you are making a commitment to be part of a classroom community that fosters learning and academic growth. People outside the classroom will understand that you are temporarily unavailable while you fulfill your university obligation to be present for this course. Please remember to turn your cell phone to “silent mode” before each class and avoid sending text messages, checking the time, or fiddling with electronic devices during lecture and group activities. If you have your phone or PDA or iPod out during class, you are quite simply being rude to the members of our class.

Reading Journal:

Ideally, I would hope that this course is about more than the material for you. I hope that it will touch your own life and compel you to reconsider some of your own taken-for-granted assumptions about gender, identity, religion, and the contemporary world.

You will hear me say this many times during the semester: a classroom is a small and sterile place to grow your mind. Good learning is anything but passive, and most of what you truly learn in your life happens through your interactions with the world. Since we're not able to really experience what we read about first hand, I am going to ask you to spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on what we read, and then writing about it in a sensitive, thoughtful way.

To this end, one-quarter of your grade is about how you (at least on paper) incorporate these themes into your own life. What is YOUR relationship to gender, Islam, and globalization? (If you think you don't have one [perhaps many] relationships to these key themes, then you really need to rethink taking this course and work on some of your own issues of egotism, apathy, and patent ignorance. It is unlikely that you will pass this course.)

I am asking you to respond to the readings in ways that are emotional and ways that are intellectual and ways that are frivolous and ways that are profound. Most of all, I want this piece to be well-written and “real,” something that you might consider sharing with others besides me.

The best journals will not be written the night before the assignment is due (currently unscheduled, but probably late November), but will show a trajectory of growth and integration that develops through the semester. I expect an “A” level journal will have no fewer than twenty substantive entries during the semester, and I expect it to demonstrate integration, analysis, synthesis and personal/intellectual development.

There are ways that you can make this Journal meaningful to you, perhaps by incorporating your responses into a blog or another kind of project you already keep up with.

We can talk about it more in class, and definitely I want to hear about this one on one.

Final Paper:

The final and heaviest component of this course is a piece of independent scholarship based on library-based research.

Details to follow, but I expect this paper will run between fifteen and twenty pages, and will include a lengthy appropriate bibliography of twelve to fifteen entries.

Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Honor and Shame.” Excerpt from Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Is there a Muslim Sexuality? Changing Constructions of Sexuality in Egyptian Bedouin Weddings.” In Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, edited by Caroline B. Brettell and Carolyn F. Sargent. Prentice Hall, 2005.

Ali, Tariq. “Women Versus the Eternal Masculine.” In The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads, and Modernity. Verso Press, 2002.

Bernal, Victoria. “Islam, Transnational Culture, and Modernity in Rural Sudan.” In Gendered Encounters: Challenging Cultural Boundaries and Social Hierarchies in Africa, edited by Maria Grosz-Ngaté and Omari H. Kokole. Routledge, 1997.

Bulbeck, Chilla. “Sexual Identities: Western Imperialism?” from Re-Orienting Western Feminism: Women's Diversity in a Post Colonial World. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Deeb, Lara. Excerpt from An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi'i Lebanon. Princeton University Press, 2006.

Dox, Donnalee. “Thinking through Veils: Questions of Culture, Criticism, and the Body.” Theatre Research International 22(2):150-61. 1997.

Ebadi, Shirin. Excerpt from Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope. Random House, 2006.

Eisenstein, Zillah. Excerpt from Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts in the 21st Century. Routledge, 1996.

El Saadawi, Nawal. “Women and the Poor: The Challenge of Global Justice.” In The Nawal El Sasadawi Reader. Zed Books. 1997.

Ferme, Mariane. “What Alhaji Airplane saw in Mecca, and What Happened when He Came Home: Ritual Transformation in a Mende Community. In Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, edited by C. Stewart and Rosalind Shaw. Routledge, 1994.

Ilkkaracan, Pinar. “Women, Sexuality, and Social Change in the Middle East.” In Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee. Prentice Hall, 2007.

Inhorn, Marcia. “The Infertility Problem in Egypt.” Excerpt from Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility and Egyptian Medical Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

Husain, Mir Zohair. “Understanding Islam, Muslims, Islamism, and Anti-Americanism.” In Islam and the Muslim World, McGraw-Hill. 2006.

Iqbal, Zubair and Abbas Mirakhor. Excerpt from Islamic Banking. World Bank, 1987.

Krier, Jennifer. “Narrating Herself: Power and Gender in a [Sumatran] Woman's Tale of Conflict.” In Bewitching Women and Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia, edited by Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz. University of California Press, 1995.

Launay, Robert. “The Power of Names: Illegitimacy in a Muslim Community in Cote d'Ivoire.” In Situating Fertility: Anthropology and Demographic Inquiry, edited by Susan Greenhalgh. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Margold, Jane. “Narratives of Masculinity and Transnational Migration.” In Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia, ed by Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz. University of California Press, 1995.

Memmi, Albert. “Assigning Value to Difference.” From “Attempt at a Definition,” Dominated Man. Viking Press, 1968.

Mohanty, Chandra. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse.” In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by C. Mohanty et al. Indiana University Press, 1991.

Ong, Aihwa. Excerpt from Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. SUNY Press, 1987.

Ramzani, Vaheed. “September 11, Masculinity, Justice, and the Politics of Empathy.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 22(1&2). 2002.

Rothenberg, Celia. “'My Wife is from the Jinn': Palestinian men, Diaspora, and Love.” In Islamic Masculinities, edited by Lahoucine Ouzgane. Zed Books, 2006.

Rozario, Santi. “Community and Resistance: Muslim Women in Contemporary Societies,” In Women, Power and Resistance: An Introduction to Women's Studies, edited by Tess Cosslett, Alison Easton, and Penny Summerfield, pp. 209-223. Open University Press, 1996.

Rubenberg, Paula. “The Foundation of Gender Identity: Garaba , Relational Connectivity and Patriarchy,” from Palestinian Women: Patriarchy and Resistance in the West Bank. Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2001.

Sayeed, Almas. “Chappals and Gym Shorts: An Indian-Muslim Woman in the Land of Oz,” In The Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender, Social Class, and Sexual Orientation, edited by Karen E. Rosenblum and Toni-Michelle C. Travis. McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Sev'er, Aysan & Gökçeçiçek Yaurdakul, “Culture of Honor, Culture of Change: A Feminist Analysis of Honor Killings in Rural Turkey.” Violence Against Women 7(9). 2001.

Course Outline, Reading Schedule, and Homework Assignments *

Aug 23 Intro to the course

I. Introduction to Islam and Islamic Cultures

Key Questions: What distinguishes the religion known as Islam? How has it been historically practiced, (re-)produced, and interpreted in both the East and the West? How is it possible that one fifth of the world's population is Muslim? How is Islam a “lived religion”? What are the central tenants of Islamic identity and practice? How do these practices differ according to geographic region?

Aug 25 Mernissi, c 1 - 4

Aug 28 Husain, “Understanding Islam . . . .”

Aug 30 Mernissi, c 6 – 10
Ali, “Women versus Eternal Masculine"

Sept 1 Abu-Lughod, “Honor and Shame”

Sept 4 Labor Day - No Class

Sept 6 Mernissi, c 12 – 22

II. Gender as a Social Construction

Key Questions: What is gender? How do we differentiate between gender, sexuality, and sex? What is a social construction? What is femininity? What is masculinity? How are social constructions produced, practiced, and interpreted in culture? What specific symbolic and social constructions of gender are attributed to women in Islam? To men? How are these similar or different to symbolic constructions of women in the West? How do Western feminists interpret women in the non-West?

Sept 8 Memmi, “Assigning Value . . .”
Eisenstein, “Hatred Written on the Body”

Sept 11 Bulbeck, Sexual Identies, “Western Imperialism?”

Sept 13 Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes”

Sept 15 Rozario, “Community and Resistance”

Sept 18 Rubenberg, “The Foundations of Gender Identity”

III. Muslim Families – Patrilineality, Fertility, Polygyny

Key Questions: What is a family? What is a household? What is marriage? What is parenthood? What comprises ancestry, or lineage? How are these various kin-related concepts symbolically and socially constructed in the West? In Islam? What are the gender roles practiced by women in the Islam? How is procreation understood in Islam? How are these roles crucial to identity construction? How are these processes of gender similar or different for girls and boys? Men and women? How does the life course influence the construction of gendered roles in a polygynous, pronatalist religion? How is the logic of Islam implied or imposed within the household?

Sept 20 Abu-Lughod, “Can there be a Muslim Sexuality?”

Sept 22 Inhorn, “The Infertility Problem”

Sept 25 Popenoe, p. 1 - 73

Sept 27 Launay, “The Power of Names”

Sept 29 Sev'er & Yardakul, “Culture of Honor, Culture of Change”

Oct 2 Popenoe, p. 75 - 132

Oct 4 Popenoe, p. 135 - 197

Oct 6 overflow discussion; Paper #1 DUE

IV. Muslim Feminism – Women's Activism, Influence and Power

Key Questions: Building upon what we know about the nature of “woman” in idealized Islam, how do Muslim women exercise influence and authority in Muslim communities? How do they organize politically? What role do they play economically? What role does the pilgrimage to Mecca play in Muslim women's identity? What role does work outside the home in “sweatshops” play for Muslim women? How do women resist male authority within Muslim communities? What role is played by Muslim feminist activists?

Oct 9 Ilkkaracan, “Women, Sexuality and Social Change in the Middle East ”

Oct 11 Ong, “Domestic Relations”

Oct 13 FALL BREAK - No Class

Oct 16 Holmes-Eber, c 1 - 4

Oct 18 Holmes-Eber, c 5 - 8

Oct 20 Ferme, “What Alhaji Airplane Saw . . .”

Oct 23 Krier, “Narrating Herself . . .”

Oct 25 Rothenberg, “My Wife is from the Jinn . . .”

Oct 27 discussion day - - -

V. Transnationalism and Immigration: Islam and the West

Key Questions: How do Muslim women experience life when Islam is not the major mainstream religion? Do families, households, or gender roles change when women physically leave regions dominated by Islamic thought? What aspects of Islam do immigrants preserve within their households, and why? How do individuals respond to changes in their political, economic, social, and religious settings? How do Muslim women interpret the various messages associated with “globalization”?

Oct 30 al-Shaykh, p. 1 - 157

Nov 1 al-Shaykh, p. 161 - 236

Nov 3 al-Shaykh, p. 239 - 280

Nov 6 Bernal, “Islam, Transnational Culture, and Modernity . . .”

Nov 8 Margold, “Narratives of Masculinity . . .”

Nov 10 Sayeed, “Chappals and Gym Shorts”

Nov 13 Iqbal & Mirakhor, “Theoretical Considerations”

Nov 15 Dox, "Thinking Through Veils”

Nov 17 overflow day, discussion of Islamic Family Law

VI. Globalization, Human Rights, and Islam

Key Questions: What is “globalization”? According to whom? Is it possible to see the spread of Islam as a kind of “globalization”? What processes are associated with “globalization”? What are the implications of “globalization” to war and peace? What is meant by “human rights”? “Family law”? How do western and Islamic ideologies about morality overlap? Where do they depart from each other?

Nov 20 Ebadi, c. 1, “A Tehran Girlhood”

Nov 22 No Class- Thanksgiving Break

Nov 24 No Class- Thanksgiving Break

Nov 27 Ebadi, c. 2, “Discovering Justice”

Nov 29 Deeb, c. 4, “Ashura: Authentification and Sacrifice”

Dec 1 Deeb, c. 6, “Public Piety as Women's Jihad”

Dec. 4 Ramzani, “September 11”

Dec 6 el Saadawi, “Women and the Poor”

Dec 8 FINAL PAPER DUE

Dec??? meet during final exam hour to discuss changes in perception (if any) during the course

*Some adjustments may be made to the course schedule and course requirements during the course of the term. All changes will be announced in class in advance.