Very honored to be invited to write an essay for The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender edited by Justine Howe.
My contribution is titled “Female Filmmakers and Muslim Women in Cinema” (Updated). Here is the abstract:
This essay explores how we can come to construct a global appreciation of the cinematic lives of Muslim women, both in terms of representation and as filmmakers themselves. Here, I delineate some methodological challenges and future possibilities for doing research on Muslim women and film. Then I outline thematic patterns related to Muslim women in film images and film production. Next, I model an interpretive strategy that revolves around national and regional contexts, through a brief introduction to Muslim women, both in front of the camera and behind it, in Southeast Asian cinemas. Finally, I offer a theoretical framework for approaching “transnational” cinema, which disrupts analysis of cinema in easily recognizable categories, such as national, regional, or ethnic. Altogether, the goal is not to be comprehensive in regional film analysis but rather chart a terrain and prompt further exploration in global cinema.
The rest of the volume looks amazing. Due out at the end of 2020.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Assessing the Field of Islam and Gender
Part I. Foundational Texts in Historical and Contemporary Contexts
Chapter 1. Classical Qurʾanic Exegesis and Women
Hadia Mubarak
Chapter 2. Sex and Marriage in Early Islamic Law
Carolyn Baugh
Chapter 3. Islamic Gender Ethics: Traditional Discourses, Critiques, and New Frameworks of Inclusivity
Zahra Ayubi
Chapter 4. Muslima Theology
Jerusha Tanner Rhodes
Chapter 5. Paradigm Shifts and Transformative Scholarship: The Intellectual Impact of Women’s Scholarly Works in Damascus in the late Twentieth Century
Feryal Salem
Part II. Sex, Sexuality, and Sexual Difference
Chapter 6. Applying Gender and Queer Theory to Pre-Modern Sources
Ash Geissinger
Chapter 7. Intersex in pre-modern Islamic medicine, law, and activism
Indira Gesink
Chapter 8. Sexuality and human rights: Actors & Factors
Anissa Helie
Chapter 9. Mixité, Gender Difference, and the Politics of Islam in France After the Headscarf Ban
Kirsten Wesselhoeft
Part III. Gendered Authority and Piety
Chapter 10. Gendering the Divine: Women, Femininity, and Queer Identities on the Sufi Path
Merin Shobhana Xavier
Chapter 11. Gender and the Karbala Paradigm: On Studying Contemporary Shi‘i Women
Edith Szanto
Chapter 12. The Stabilization of Gender in Zakat: The Margin of Freedom and the Politics of Care
Danielle Widmann Abraham
Chapter 13. Muslim Chaplaincy and Female Religious Authority in North America
Sajida Jalalzai
Chapter 14. Malama Ta Ce!: Women Preachers, Audiovisual Media and the Construction of Religious Authority in Niamey, Niger
Abdoulaye Sounaye
Part IV. Political and Religious Displacements
Chapter 15. Gender, Muslims, Islam, and Colonial India
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst
Chapter 16. Islam and Gender on the Swahili Coast of East Africa
Nathaniel Mathews
Chapter 17. Mujahidun, Mujahidat: Balancing Gender in the Struggle of Jihadi-Salafis
Nathan French
Chapter 18. Modelling Exile: Syrian Women Gather to Discuss Prophetic Examples in Jordan
Sarah Tobin
Part V. Negotiating Law, Ethics, and Normativity
Chapter 19. Transgressing the Boundaries: Zina and Legal Accommodation in the Premodern Maghrib
Rosemary Admiral
Chapter 20. Women and Islamic law: from colonialist feminism to decoloniality
Lena Salaymeh
Chapter 21. Gender and Islamic Law: From Polemics to Feminist Ethics
Fatima Seedat
Chapter 22. Human Rights, Gender, and the State: Islamic Perspectives
Shannon Dunn
Part VI. Vulnerability, Care, and Violence in Muslim Families
Chapter 23. Two ‘Quiet’ Reproductive Revolutions: Islam, Gender, and (In)Fertility
Marcia C. Inhorn
Chapter 24 Aging and the Elderly: Diminishing Family Care Systems and Need for Alternatives
Mary Elaine Hegland
Chapter 25. Domestic Violence and US Muslim Communities: Negotiating Advocacy, Vulnerability, and Gender Norms
Juliane Hammer
Chapter 26. #Voiceout: Sufi Hardcore Activism in the Lion City
Sophia Arjana
Part VII. Representation, Commodification, Popular Culture
Chapter 27. Hijab, Islamic Fashion, and Modest Clothing: Hybrids of Modernity and Religious Commodity
Faegheh Shirazi
Chapter 28. Constructing the Muslim Woman in Advertising
Kayla Renée Wheeler
Chapter 29. French Muslim Women’s Clothes: The Secular State’s Religious War against Racialised Women
Shabana Mir
Chapter 30. Female Filmmakers and Muslim Women in Cinema
Kristian Petersen
Chapter 31. Gender, Race, and American Islamophobia
Megan Goodwin
Dr. Kristian Petersen 