Shenila Khoja-Moolji
Biographic Data
| ID | 3743037 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shenila Khoja-Moolji |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shenila |
| FAMILY NAME | Khoja-Moolji |
| SIGNATURE | KHOJA-MOOLJI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 135 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Inherited Crisis
This article examines how Uganda’s 1972 expulsion of Asians continues to shape the lives of second-generation Shia Ismaili Muslims whose families were not expelled directly but left Kenya and Tanzania in the shadow of that crisis and later resettled in North America. Community narratives have tended to emphasize the expulsion as an event in the past, overcome through gratitude, hard work, and successful integration. Yet, I show that the second ge…
Attuning Through Devotional Sounds
How does devotional sound shape religious life in minoritized communities, and what forms of ethical and political imagination does it make possible? This article examines these questions through Shia Ismaili Muslims in North America and their recitation of ginans—devotional compositions attributed to satpanthi preacher-poets (pirs) and performed for centuries in South Asia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and close listening, I argue that gina…
Policy dissidents
Global policymaking often seeks to create processes for the effective delivery of public goods and services. What happens when individuals critique or dissent such policies? In this paper, we examine the case of two activists—Greta Thunberg and Disha Ravi—who have been mobilizing attention toward climate change since their teenage years, and who have been both celebrated and vilified for it. While climate change policies emphasize the importance …
The Public Lives of Sovereignty
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsShenila Khoja-MooljiShenila Khoja-Moolji is the Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Associate Professor of Muslim Societies at Georgetown University. She is the author of award-winning books which include, Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia (2018) and Sovereign Attachments: M…
Patriarchy as an Assemblage
This article contributes to recent debates about nuancing the idea of ‘patriarchy’ by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage. It provides an account of patriarchy as a contingent yet persistent effect of human and material interactions wherein some molar forces aggregate and territorialise social relations around specific notions of womanhood, while molecular flows evade them. The particular set of interactions that this paper con…
Death by benevolence
The bodies of non-White girls are hyper-visible in humanitarian discourses. This article engages in theoretical reflections around the articulation of Whiteness through the body of the third world girl. I curate and examine an archive of texts and visuals from menstrual hygiene and female genital mutilation (FGM) awareness campaigns to show how the figure of the third world girl is materialised simultaneously as deserving of care/protection and a…
Re-animating Muslim women's auto/biographical writings
The dominant image of Indian Muslim women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is one of being uneducated, silent, and secluded. This trope has crossed temporal and spatial borders, making its appearance even today in representations of Muslim girls in international development policy literature and media. Often Islam is blamed for women’s conditions, and limited attention is paid to their contextual specificity. One way to decolonize this i…
Forging the Ideal Educated Gir
In Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the figure of the 'educated girl' to examine the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women's and girls' education and argues that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, concerned with producing ideal Muslim woman-/girl-…
The sounds of racialized masculinities
ALLAHU AKBAR!!!!!Often when audiences in the West hear this sound, their faces cringe and their bodies become smaller. They shrink because there is a sense of certainty that this sound will be foll
Reparative readings
Black girls and women in the west reside at the nexus of racism and sexism, pinned down by a vitriolic hate for the black feminised body that is wedded to legacies of slavery. Dominant discourses configure these bodies as animalistic and other (than human), thus informing a range of (educational) policies, practices, and programmes. These narratives shape teachers’ curricular and pedagogical practices in ways that potentially objectify and wound …
Happy places, horrible times, and scary learners
Drawing on data from two studies conducted in US public schools, this paper traces the affective productions and performances of teachers to illustrate the role of affect in delineating (non)normative pedagogical practices in inclusive classrooms. Occupying a borderland space in narrative inquiry that permitted the straddling of differing philosophical traditions, we sought to both acknowledge the agentive work of teachers as well as the affectiv…
Becoming an “Intimate Publics”
Several scholars have written about the convergence on ‘the girl’ in the field of international development and its ideological implications (see Ofra Koffman and Rosalind Gill 2013; Heather Switze
Doing the ‘work of hearing’
There is an increasing focus in transnational campaigns for girls’ education and empowerment on highlighting the voices of girls from the global south. These moves are made in response to feminist critiques of said campaigns for not attending to the diverse, multiple and complex lived experiences of girls. This article engages in theorising these present encounters and suggests alternate methodologies for engaging with girls. It argues that elici…
Reading Malala
In this article, I theorize the phenomenon of specific women being taken up periodically to represent the collectivity of Muslim women—and, relationally, reveal characteristics about the collectivity of Muslim men—by focusing specifically on the figure of Malala Yousafzai, a fifteen-year-old girl who was shot in the head by a member of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, a tribal political formation in Pakistan, in 2012. Drawing on literature from the fields o…
Producing neoliberal citizens
This paper challenges the celebratory uptake of human rights education (HRE) in postcolonial contexts by making visible the ideological and political entanglements of the discourse with neoliberal assumptions of citizenship. I draw evidence from, and critically reflect on, a specific HRE programme – a series of summer camps for girls entitled, Women Leaders of Tomorrow (WLT) – that a colleague and I implemented in Pakistan. Using narrative inquir…
Forging the Ideal Educated Gir
In Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the figure of the 'educated girl' to examine the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women's and girls' education and argues that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, concerned with producing ideal Muslim woman-/girl-…
Reading Malala
In this article, I theorize the phenomenon of specific women being taken up periodically to represent the collectivity of Muslim women—and, relationally, reveal characteristics about the collectivity of Muslim men—by focusing specifically on the figure of Malala Yousafzai, a fifteen-year-old girl who was shot in the head by a member of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, a tribal political formation in Pakistan, in 2012. Drawing on literature from the fields o…
Doing the ‘work of hearing’
There is an increasing focus in transnational campaigns for girls’ education and empowerment on highlighting the voices of girls from the global south. These moves are made in response to feminist critiques of said campaigns for not attending to the diverse, multiple and complex lived experiences of girls. This article engages in theorising these present encounters and suggests alternate methodologies for engaging with girls. It argues that elici…
Becoming an “Intimate Publics”
Several scholars have written about the convergence on ‘the girl’ in the field of international development and its ideological implications (see Ofra Koffman and Rosalind Gill 2013; Heather Switze
Death by benevolence
The bodies of non-White girls are hyper-visible in humanitarian discourses. This article engages in theoretical reflections around the articulation of Whiteness through the body of the third world girl. I curate and examine an archive of texts and visuals from menstrual hygiene and female genital mutilation (FGM) awareness campaigns to show how the figure of the third world girl is materialised simultaneously as deserving of care/protection and a…
Producing neoliberal citizens
This paper challenges the celebratory uptake of human rights education (HRE) in postcolonial contexts by making visible the ideological and political entanglements of the discourse with neoliberal assumptions of citizenship. I draw evidence from, and critically reflect on, a specific HRE programme – a series of summer camps for girls entitled, Women Leaders of Tomorrow (WLT) – that a colleague and I implemented in Pakistan. Using narrative inquir…
Happy places, horrible times, and scary learners
Drawing on data from two studies conducted in US public schools, this paper traces the affective productions and performances of teachers to illustrate the role of affect in delineating (non)normative pedagogical practices in inclusive classrooms. Occupying a borderland space in narrative inquiry that permitted the straddling of differing philosophical traditions, we sought to both acknowledge the agentive work of teachers as well as the affectiv…
The sounds of racialized masculinities
ALLAHU AKBAR!!!!!Often when audiences in the West hear this sound, their faces cringe and their bodies become smaller. They shrink because there is a sense of certainty that this sound will be foll
Reparative readings
Black girls and women in the west reside at the nexus of racism and sexism, pinned down by a vitriolic hate for the black feminised body that is wedded to legacies of slavery. Dominant discourses configure these bodies as animalistic and other (than human), thus informing a range of (educational) policies, practices, and programmes. These narratives shape teachers’ curricular and pedagogical practices in ways that potentially objectify and wound …
Re-animating Muslim women's auto/biographical writings
The dominant image of Indian Muslim women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is one of being uneducated, silent, and secluded. This trope has crossed temporal and spatial borders, making its appearance even today in representations of Muslim girls in international development policy literature and media. Often Islam is blamed for women’s conditions, and limited attention is paid to their contextual specificity. One way to decolonize this i…
Patriarchy as an Assemblage
This article contributes to recent debates about nuancing the idea of ‘patriarchy’ by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage. It provides an account of patriarchy as a contingent yet persistent effect of human and material interactions wherein some molar forces aggregate and territorialise social relations around specific notions of womanhood, while molecular flows evade them. The particular set of interactions that this paper con…
Producing neoliberal citizens
This paper challenges the celebratory uptake of human rights education (HRE) in postcolonial contexts by making visible the ideological and political entanglements of the discourse with neoliberal assumptions of citizenship. I draw evidence from, and critically reflect on, a specific HRE programme – a series of summer camps for girls entitled, Women Leaders of Tomorrow (WLT) – that a colleague and I implemented in Pakistan. Using narrative inquir…
Becoming an “Intimate Publics”
Several scholars have written about the convergence on ‘the girl’ in the field of international development and its ideological implications (see Ofra Koffman and Rosalind Gill 2013; Heather Switze
Doing the ‘work of hearing’
There is an increasing focus in transnational campaigns for girls’ education and empowerment on highlighting the voices of girls from the global south. These moves are made in response to feminist critiques of said campaigns for not attending to the diverse, multiple and complex lived experiences of girls. This article engages in theorising these present encounters and suggests alternate methodologies for engaging with girls. It argues that elici…
Reading Malala
In this article, I theorize the phenomenon of specific women being taken up periodically to represent the collectivity of Muslim women—and, relationally, reveal characteristics about the collectivity of Muslim men—by focusing specifically on the figure of Malala Yousafzai, a fifteen-year-old girl who was shot in the head by a member of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, a tribal political formation in Pakistan, in 2012. Drawing on literature from the fields o…
The sounds of racialized masculinities
ALLAHU AKBAR!!!!!Often when audiences in the West hear this sound, their faces cringe and their bodies become smaller. They shrink because there is a sense of certainty that this sound will be foll
Reparative readings
Black girls and women in the west reside at the nexus of racism and sexism, pinned down by a vitriolic hate for the black feminised body that is wedded to legacies of slavery. Dominant discourses configure these bodies as animalistic and other (than human), thus informing a range of (educational) policies, practices, and programmes. These narratives shape teachers’ curricular and pedagogical practices in ways that potentially objectify and wound …
Happy places, horrible times, and scary learners
Drawing on data from two studies conducted in US public schools, this paper traces the affective productions and performances of teachers to illustrate the role of affect in delineating (non)normative pedagogical practices in inclusive classrooms. Occupying a borderland space in narrative inquiry that permitted the straddling of differing philosophical traditions, we sought to both acknowledge the agentive work of teachers as well as the affectiv…
Forging the Ideal Educated Gir
In Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the figure of the 'educated girl' to examine the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women's and girls' education and argues that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, concerned with producing ideal Muslim woman-/girl-…
Re-animating Muslim women's auto/biographical writings
The dominant image of Indian Muslim women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is one of being uneducated, silent, and secluded. This trope has crossed temporal and spatial borders, making its appearance even today in representations of Muslim girls in international development policy literature and media. Often Islam is blamed for women’s conditions, and limited attention is paid to their contextual specificity. One way to decolonize this i…
Death by benevolence
The bodies of non-White girls are hyper-visible in humanitarian discourses. This article engages in theoretical reflections around the articulation of Whiteness through the body of the third world girl. I curate and examine an archive of texts and visuals from menstrual hygiene and female genital mutilation (FGM) awareness campaigns to show how the figure of the third world girl is materialised simultaneously as deserving of care/protection and a…
Patriarchy as an Assemblage
This article contributes to recent debates about nuancing the idea of ‘patriarchy’ by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage. It provides an account of patriarchy as a contingent yet persistent effect of human and material interactions wherein some molar forces aggregate and territorialise social relations around specific notions of womanhood, while molecular flows evade them. The particular set of interactions that this paper con…
The Public Lives of Sovereignty
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsShenila Khoja-MooljiShenila Khoja-Moolji is the Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Associate Professor of Muslim Societies at Georgetown University. She is the author of award-winning books which include, Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia (2018) and Sovereign Attachments: M…
Policy dissidents
Global policymaking often seeks to create processes for the effective delivery of public goods and services. What happens when individuals critique or dissent such policies? In this paper, we examine the case of two activists—Greta Thunberg and Disha Ravi—who have been mobilizing attention toward climate change since their teenage years, and who have been both celebrated and vilified for it. While climate change policies emphasize the importance …
Inherited Crisis
This article examines how Uganda’s 1972 expulsion of Asians continues to shape the lives of second-generation Shia Ismaili Muslims whose families were not expelled directly but left Kenya and Tanzania in the shadow of that crisis and later resettled in North America. Community narratives have tended to emphasize the expulsion as an event in the past, overcome through gratitude, hard work, and successful integration. Yet, I show that the second ge…
Attuning Through Devotional Sounds
How does devotional sound shape religious life in minoritized communities, and what forms of ethical and political imagination does it make possible? This article examines these questions through Shia Ismaili Muslims in North America and their recitation of ginans—devotional compositions attributed to satpanthi preacher-poets (pirs) and performed for centuries in South Asia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and close listening, I argue that gina…
Sociology (11 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Girl (4 works)