Teaching About Women and Islam in North Africa
Integrating Postcolonial Feminist Theory in the Classroom
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8936094 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon (University of Alabama at Birmingham, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 181-233 |
| Publication date | 2011-02-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Foreign Language Annals (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0015-718X • E-ISSN: 1944-9720 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01120.x |
| OpenAlex | W1931278571 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 16 |
Using postcolonial feminist theory, the researcher attempts in this article to redefine the interpretive framework through which courses on Islam and North African women are being taught in American undergraduate classes. Several conceptual limitations have been identified: inadequate knowledge of the geography and history of North Africa; the discursive dichotomy between East and West; the production of the Muslim woman as a single category; the tendency to de‐historicize Islam and Eastern cultures in general into unchanging and closed systems of religious practices and beliefs; the uncritical adoption of Islamic exegesis as an explanatory prism to understand all the woes of the Islamic world; and the cultural essentialism underlying the discourse of multiculturalism in American textbooks. To each one of these limitations, the author proposes alternative teaching strategies such as the historicization of all discourses on Muslim women; inclusion of the scholarship of Maghrebian women scholars in the classroom; role‐playing; cross‐cultural comparisons; and the integration of medieval maps and Renaissance drawings as well as audiovisual materials produced in North Africa and the Middle East ranging from political cartoons and commercials to youth programs like “Star Academy.”
Archaeology · Essentialism · Islam · Islamic culture · Multiculturalism · Pedagogy · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society
The eloquence of silence
Cultural Theory
Qur'an and Woman
States and Women's Rights
Women and Gender in Islam
Windows of Faith
The Muqaddimah
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order
Colonial Desire
Imagined communities
The violence of remembering and forgetting
Mestizo Logics
Theory in Anthropology
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2023 (2) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |