Special Program - Gender, Islam and the West Resource Project
Follow this link to view background and teaching materials on the subject of Gender, Islam, and the West, created from the program of events held at UC Berkeley. Get in-depth information about our speakers, the topics at hand, and further reading material.
The Institute of European Studies was awarded a grant from the Social Sciences Research Council to create a public outreach program focused on Gender, Islam and the West during academic year 2008-09. This interdisciplinary program placed academics, public intellectuals, activists, artists, and writers in conversation with an informed public to explore the relationship between Islam and Western secularism, particularly as it manifests itself in the lives of women.
The following is a list of program events held that year, with summaries of their content in most cases:
Spring 2009
Do Muslim Women Want Rights?
Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University in conversation with Saba Mahmood, UC Berkeley.
Cosponsored by Grace Cathedral.
February 10, 2009
Grace Cathedral, 1100 California Street, San Francisco
Report & Transcript from Event
Women’s Memoirs: Eye Witness Accounts in the Courts of a Humanitarian Empire
Fatemeh Keshavarz, Washington University, author of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Teheran in conversation with Minoo Moallem, UC Berkeley.
Cosponsored by the Department of Women & Gender Studies.
February 18, 2009
Report & Transcript from Event
Cover-Up: French Gender Equality and the Islamic Headscarf
Joan Wallach-Scott, Princeton University, Olivier Roy, moderator, CNRS, France.
Cosponsored by the European Union Center of Excellence.
February 25, 2009
Cover-Up: French Gender Equality and the Islamic Headscarf
World Affairs Council of Sonoma County
Audio File from the Talk (mp3)
February 26, 2009
Morrison Library, Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Audio File from the Talk (mp3)
Report & Transcript from Event
An interview with Joan Wallach-Scott was conducted at Berkeley by Harry Kriesler, director of IIS, on the day of her visit to Berkeley. Go to the Conversations with History section of YouTube to view this interview.
Journey From the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran
Roya Hakakian, author of Journey to the Land of No, in conversation with Jaleh Pirnazar, Near Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley.
Cosponsored by the Jewish Studies Program with support from the Iranian Student Alliance in America (ISAA).
March 4, 2009
Black Oak Books, Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
Audio File from the Talk (mp3)
Report & Transcript from Event
Beyond Memoir: Women, Writing and the Making of Iranian Diaspora Identities
Author and Editor, Persis M. Karim, Cal State San Jose, in Conversation with Jaleh Pirnazar, Professor of Persian, UC Berkeley
Diesel Books, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland
Report & Transcript from Event
Fall 2008
Islam and Europe: Multiculturalism and the Challenge of Tolerance
Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, Bard College
In a time marked by conflict between Islam and the West, approaches to Muslim immigrant integration into Western societies have been politicized and debated. Dutch-born author Ian Buruma explores the challenge of both promoting and practicing tolerance in multicultural societies in Europe amidst violent conflict and heightened resentment. Ian Buruma was voted one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines in 2008 and is the author of Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.
October 17, 2008
Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall
Audio File from the Talk (mp3)
October 20, 2008
San Francisco World Affairs Council
Audio File from the Talk (external link)
Perspectives Européennes: Femmes et Islam
Eric Dupin (Chief Editor of the French Magazine Marianne in conversation with Aracely Araceli Hernandez-Laroche, Department of French, UC Berkeley
October 21, 2008
Alliance Française, San Francisco
Roundtable on the Immigration and Integration of Muslim Women in Europe
Jocelyne Cesari, Harvard University, Minoo Moallem,UC Berkeley, Marieme Helie Lucas, Women Living Under Muslim Law
December 4,.2008
Audio File from the Roundtable (mp3)
Cosponsored with the Global fund for Women
Report & Transcript from Event
Jocelyne Cesari has been an associate in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University since 2001, where she directs the Islam in the West program. A major publication, Encyclopedia of Islam in America, will be published by Greenwood Press in 2007 under the auspices of this research program. She has published numerous books and articles in European and American journals, including most recently European Muslims and the Secular State (Ashgate, 2005).
Watch and interview with Jocelyne Cesari's on YouTube: Jocelyne Cesari, participant in the Roundtable on the Immigration and Integration of Muslim Women.
December 4th, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdMe4J0pczo
Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist and psychotherapist. Since the 1960s she has managed policies of education and training in the new industries and oil sector of Algiers, taught epistemology in the social sciences at Algiers University, and has founded two organizations serving women: Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in 1984, and Secularism is a Women’s Issue (SIAWI) in 2005.
Trained as a sociologist, Minoo Moallem engages with transnational and postcolonial feminist studies, religious nationalism and fundamentalism, immigration and diaspora studies, Middle Eastern studies and Iranian cultural politics. She is the author of Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Cultural Politics of Patriarchy in Iran (2005) and is currently working on a book manuscript, addressing the commodification of the nation through consumptive production and circulation of such commodities as the Persian carpet; a research project on gender, media and religion; and a project on Iran-Iraq war movies and masculinity.
