Public sphere

This dissertation explores the ways in which the current constitutional system in Turkey is being contested and negotiated around the constitutive norm of secularism and the place and role of Islam, as these negotiations are carried out in various sites of everyday life. Islamic…

In recent years, the intensification of the globalization process and reactions to it by particular groups and identities, has raised awareness of the question of difference in nation states. National identity for a long time has been able to establish itself as a hegemonic enti…

Ethnographically and conceptually, this dissertation is concerned with the discourses and practices through which a panoply of civil Muslim actors and institutions articulates a coherent mode of liberal piety in relation to both the imperatives of Turkish secularism and other de…

The revitalization of Islam in Indonesia over the past 25 years is part of a global revival of Islam. At a time when religion is reasserting itself in public life, this study investigates how religion can empower women in the public sphere and how religion is part of the ways wo…

At the dawn of the 21st century, a "critical mass" of educated, enlightened, and empowered Muslim women have emerged around the world. Their fundamental questions about Islam and women may help in transforming Islamic laws and bringing about modern, egalitarian Muslim societies.…

The following dissertation provides an ethnographic study of transformations that accompany the emergence of innovative media and communication technologies in the African Muslim nation of Morocco. Drawing on field research conducted in Casablanca, Morocco, this work addresses t…

Medieval Middle Eastern scholars Ibn al-Muqaffa', al-Farabi, Kay Ka'us, Niz[dotbelow]am al-Mulk, and Ibn Khaldun had something in common. Though their voices emerged from vastly different circumstances, they were all able to express their perspectives on political subjects (such…

This thesis explores the contributions made by North African women's autobiographical writing to francophone literature, particularly in the work of Assia Djebar, Sakinna Boukhedenna and Fatiah, though it also considers the anglophone autobiography of Fatima Mernissi 2 . The wom…

Feminist theory has demonstrated how boundaries of the political - for example, what is public or private - are themselves political, constructs of power relations in societies. Correspondingly, political theories about sexuality show how it is a political category because sexua…